Topforce

The Truth About Building A Profitable Sales Force Presented by: Sales Management University

Sales Management University * 1903 Ashwood Ct. Suite C Greensboro, North Carolina 27455 * 800-633-7762

© WILLIAM T. BROOKS, 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

Sales Management University * 1903 Ashwood Ct. Suite C Greensboro, North Carolina 27455 * 800-633-7762

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FINDING WINNERS Four Insider Secrets To Sales Success ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 What Makes A Winner? ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 2-4 Person Versus Personality …………………………………………………………………………………………... 4-6 TRAINING WINNERS Aligning Your Marketing Strategies ………………………………………………………………………………... 6-9 Leverage …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9-11 Listen People Into Buying …………………………………………………………………………………………. 11-12 Principles-Based Selling …………………………………………………………………………………………... 13-14 PROSPECTING TIPS 7 Power-Packed Prospecting Pointers ……………………………………………………………………………... 14-16 Don’t Outnumber Your Customers ………………………………………………………………………………... 16-18 Personal Positioning By Alignment ……………………………………………………………………………….. 18-19 RAPPORT BUILDING TIPS The Greatest Secret In Selling ……………………………………………………………………………………… 19-20 How To Reduce Tension And Establish Trust …………………………………………………………………….. 20-22 MOTIVATION TIPS Selling During The Lean Times …………………………………………………………………………………… 23-24 SMART QUESTIONING Discovering What People Will Buy: Asking The “Right” Questions ……………………………………………… 24-27 The Master Keys Of Selling: Asking And Listening ………………………………………………………………. 28-30 Turn Your Demonstrations Into Power-Packed, Value-Based Applications ………………………………………. 30-32 DEALING WITH OBJECTIONS Justify Your Price By Proving Value ………………………………………………………………………………. 32-34 Needed: A New Direction In Sales Training ……………………………………………………………………….. 34-35 CLOSING SALES Closing Tips For The Value-Based Salesforce ……………………………………………………………………... 35-36 All Is Lost If You Don’t Ask For The Order! ………………………………………………………………………. 37-39 The Watchword Of The 21st Century ……………………………………………………………………………… 39-40 Six Tools To Locate Qualified Prospects …………………………………………………………………………... 41-44 Building A Bridge: The Transition To Sales Talk ………………………………………………………………….. 44-46 Negotiating Tips For The Value-Based Salesforce ………………………………………………………………… 46-48 The Cornerstone Of Value-Based Selling: Proving Your Claims ………………………………………………….. 48-49 Bring Your Own Witnesses ………………………………………………………………………………………… 49-52 Notes ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 52

Sales Management University * 1903 Ashwood Ct. Suite C Greensboro, North Carolina 27455 * 800-633-7762

FINDING WINNERS

The Four Insider Secrets To Sales Success here are four questions that must be asked consistently in the hiring,

managing, training, coaching and retention of effective salespeople. These key questions are at the very center of a person’s ability to perform to any meaningful degree of sales performance. Here they are:

I Can this person sell? II How will this person sell? III Will this person sell? IV Why would this person choose to sell?

Whether it is selling a service, selling trucks, cars, computers or lingerie, the same three questions always apply. They never change!

Why is that the case? In over 20 years of in-depth research, we have concluded that there is a definitive formula for sales performance.

• Selling Skill • Behavioral Strengths • Attitudinal Structure • Personal Interests & Values

The answer to “Can this person sell?” is determined by the level of selling skills and knowledge that a salesperson possesses. What this means is that a person could have a pleasing personality and the most positive attitude in the world - and still not be able to sell. You have seen it and I have seen it. Perhaps more often than we care to admit! The truth is that selling anything requires certain skills and a solid grasp of the knowledge and principles related to the science of selling.

“How will this person sell?” is answered behaviorally. Is a particular salesperson “too pushy?” Not pushy

enough? Are they organized and structured... or are they a loose cannon? Yes, personality does have a lot to do with sales success. However, it may not play as big a role as some have traditionally believed it does.

“Will this person sell?” is a function of attitude and the real accelerator of sales performance. Is a person a self-starter or do you have to jumpstart their every effort? Can they deal with rejection? How about long hours? What is their attitude toward sales as a profession? Do they view it as a necessary evil? Do they enjoy it? How well do they handle stress? In the final analysis, the sum total of these beliefs and many more will ultimately determine if a person will sell long term. They can even override a lack of selling skills, industry know-how or even interpersonal weakness.

The single most important question, however, is this one: Why would a person choose to sell in the first place? Simply put, it is this: What a person is most interested in and inspired by, they will choose to do. By the same token the more enthused, interested and excited they are about something, the more diligently and consistently they will work at it. This is true for any profession. However, it is especially true of sales where rejection is high, failure is constant reality, work levels are demanding and the requirements for success severe. In the final analysis, this is, perhaps, the most important question of the four.

All of that aside, what are some of the most commonly agreed upon characteristics that are most critical to sales success? Let’s take a look at a quick checklist of twenty of the most essential.

There are probably a hundred more! • Positive expectancy • Belief in self and product • Ability to think on one’s feet • Product knowledge • Time Management skills • Neat, contemporary appearance • Ability to deal with rejection • Strong problem solving capacity • Courage to ask for the order • Strong interpersonal skills • Empathy • Balanced communication • Conversational skills • Strong ego • Self-starting ability • Perseverance • Listening skills • Emotional maturity • Physical stamina • Resiliency Is there any wonder why effective, productive salespeople are so tough to find, train, retain and motivate? Customer focused, positive and responsive salespeople are the most essential ingredient to your long-term success. Invest the time, money, energy and effort to do the following: • Attract the best • Select them carefully • Train them correctly • Manage them with vision • Create a positive, customer-focused and

highly charged environment and... • Get out of their way and let them sell! To sample a free assessment, click here.

Remember that selling is a very personal, one-on-one activity. It will always require effective, caring and competent salespeople. Don’t ever believe - otherwise you’ll never be able to offer most products through a vending machine!

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What Makes A Winner? The 80-20 Rule Expanded

he well-known 80-20 rule (Pareto Principle) applies perfectly to sales

forces, but we have discovered a little known corollary to it. Simply stated, the basic rule is that 80 percent of all sales are produced by only 20 percent of the salespeople. That truism applies to most areas of human endeavor and has spurred many people to success in a wide range of enterprises. Yet, as powerful as its message is, we discovered a startling enhancement to that rule when we found that: More than 60 percent of all sales are made by the top five percent of all salespeople. We wondered why that was true and began asking salespeople we worked with, “Why is it that more than 60 percent of all the sales are made by the top five percent of all salespeople?” We got a wide spectrum of answers. Some typical ones were: “They’ve got products that are in great demand,” some would say. “They’ve got good territories,” others answered. “They just work harder,” confessed some. “Some are born lucky” was a common response. We have found studies that refute every one of those claims. Most salespeople in the top five percent would do well selling almost anything, almost anywhere, and they often work fewer hours than most of the sales-people in the bottom 20 percent. The studies found that the true answer to why the top five percent of all salespeople have become the real champions in selling is

simply this: they have and use the winner’s edge of customer-focused, value-based selling. In other words, they possess and use the power to convince people to buy. If all things are equal within your niche, then the Salesforce with the most IMPACT will enjoy the most success. Let’s now find out more about what customer impact is, discover how it can give you the winner’s edge and learn how to get it. Why Customer Impact Works A great way to understand customer impact is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Here is one scenario that is easy to envision: Your doorbell rings, you answer it and discover it is a salesperson who wants to come in and show you a miraculous new can opener that can be yours for a phenomenally low price. You are courteous, but you quickly get rid of that salesperson. If he or she gets pushy, you might even speak abruptly and slam the door. Yet, later that evening an insurance salesperson keeps an appointment with you, and you spend more than an hour soaking up every word of the presentation. When it is over, you obligate yourself to spend thousands of times what you would have spent on the can opener. What is the difference? Why is it that we will listen intently to everything one person says, while we will not give another the time of day? The obvious answer is that you were more interested in insurance than you were in a can opener. Yet, that is only a surface

answer that raises an even more important question: How does any salesperson awaken a prospect’s interest and convince people it is to their advantage to invest time in listening to a sales presentation? There are countless techniques that could give you someone’s attention long enough to rattle off a traditional sales pitch. Remember, though, techniques are for short-range goals. To succeed for a long-range career, you must ground your attention-getting methods on principles. We have developed four principles that make the answer to the “what is the difference?” question absolutely clear: To learn about the IMPACT system, click here.

Customers IMPACT Principle #1: We pay attention to people we believe have something important to tell us. The beginning of high customer impact in your career will come with your capacity to convince people that what you have to say is important to them. Your customers live in a world where they are continually bombarded by people who claim to have something important to say to them. Your challenge is to convince them. Again, put yourself in a customer’s shoes: All day long, people are trying to gain your attention. The boss wants you to hear or read instructions; family members want you to do things for them; friends and neighbors have ideas they want to share; television, newspapers, and radio blitz you with appeals to buy things. You live in a never ending barrage of hype. Communications experts have found the typical American receives about 1,800

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messages a day that press for some form of action. That totals 9,000 messages in one normal work week, and you are only one of those messages. Americans have learned to tune out most of this stream of unwanted messages. We have learned to filter out all but those messages we think are important to us. In order to be successful, salespeople must have the capacity to break through those thousands of other messages and convince a prospect that what they have to say really matters to him or her. How can that be done? Though the process of breaking through listening barriers involves many steps, we have found another impact principle that provides a basis for the process: Customer IMPACT Principle #2: People buy for their own reasons; not for yours or mine. Champion salespeople know that prospects typically could not care less if they have a chance to win a trip to Hawaii, or a new car, or even a yacht. We all have an inner radio that is pre-tuned to pick up only one station-WII-FM. That stands for What’s In It For Me? Every prospect you call on has his or her own needs, interests, and desires and the only place they hear ads about how to fulfill them is on WII-FM. During training experiences with thousands of salespeople, we have observed that the greatest single selling error occurs when salespeople consistently fail to broadcast their messages over their prospects’ personal station, WII-FM. Salespeople who use traditional selling techniques broadcast in a buyer blind spot, focusing on why they want to sell, instead of who would want to buy what they’re selling.

This blind spot in salespeople’s attitudes often results in a preoccupation with handling objections. Traditional sales training has preached that we should continually read, study, and practice techniques to “overcome objections,” rather than find out how to connect with what the customer needs and how we can supply it. The top five percent of the selling profession always remembers WII-FM and continually broadcast that they know how to help people get what they need or want. A single-minded focus on this one concept, that of viewing yourself as a needs-fulfiller for every prospect, will easily place you in the top five percent. That insight is important enough to rephrase as a vital principle: Nothing else can give you more customer impact than knowing how to direct every appeal to the prospect’s self-interests. That leads us to the next vital insight into what gives a salesperson impact: Customer IMPACT Principle #3: People do not want to be sold; they want to buy. Have you ever noticed that when someone proudly displays a purchase they are pleased with that the most common expression is, “I bought it from...?” It is only when we are unhappy with a purchase we have made that we say, “That XYZ Company sold this trash to me!” In a crowded niche market, a few customers making statements like that will quickly ruin your reputation. People resent feeling coerced, manipulated, or tricked into doing or buying anything. We will We will listen to, and even appreciate,

information about a product, service, or company that interests us. We will ask questions about things we don’t understand. We will even welcome some gentle persuasion to help us make up our minds. Yet, the moment we feel someone is trying to manipulate, intimidate or dominate us, our defenses take over and we prepare to put up a good fight. Tricky selling maneuvers are an invasion of personal space and propriety and people will defend their personal space almost to their death. True sales champions know that when a salesperson and a customer get locked into a war of the wills, the salesperson always loses. The emphasis must remain on helping prospects make the decision to buy, never on selling. When you are meeting someone’s needs, you never trigger negative emotions, instead you become a welcome aide. Customer IMPACT Principle #4: Buying is basically an emotional response. The two most fundamental reasons any of us buy anything are the desire for gain and the fear of loss. We buy because we hope to gain something from the purchase or because we want to avoid a loss we are currently experiencing or expect may occur. Buying is primarily an emotional response. Our purchases may be guided by common sense and reason. We may temper our purchases by logic. We may be delayed by conflicting interests. Yet, what causes us to sign on the dotted line is emotion. That principle suggests several important aspects of customer impact that we should consider.

First, it suggests that people buy benefits for themselves, not features, products, services, nor even corporate reputations. They are seeking benefits that will fulfill their desire for gain or protect them from the loss they fear. Second, it suggests that a strong empathy for the customer is absolutely vital for success in selling. Since buying decisions always involve emotions, you must be intuitively insightful into what the prospect is feeling. Third, it means that you must be the sort of salesperson with whom people enjoy doing business. During an emotional experience, no one needs a salesperson pushing more into the flood they already feel. Your customer impact will rise sharply when you put your heart into your work. Learn how to connect with your customers’ feelings and how to help them find and fulfill their desires or overcome their fears. Benjamin Franklin stated it best when he said: “In persuasion, talk of emotion, not reason?’ Customer impact is the ability to gain and hold the attention of the right people and to influence them to buy. It is your capacity to get people to filter your message out of the 9,000 others they will hear during their work week and eventually follow your lead in a buying decision. If you do that, you will make more money, have more control over your life and gain greater recognition in selling than in nearly any profession available to you. Having high customer impact is the dominant factor that separates the winners from the losers in the selling profession.

uccess at value-based, customer-focused selling requires deeper personal qualities than merely having a good sales

personality. Yet, personality has often been mistakenly used as the key issue by sales managers when hiring new salespeople. The common belief is that if a person meets a certain personality profile, they will be able to sell. Naturally, when you are screening new candidates, a question that should be in your mind is, “Can they sell?” The answer to that question is: almost everyone can sell. Mastering the mechanics of value-based selling is easily within the capacity of most people and we have seen successful salespeople with practically every personality type under the sun. Personality, by itself, has little to do with selling unless it represents some dreadfully repulsive or negative behavior. With that knowledge, you need to ask a different question about your candidates than whether they can sell. A better question to ask is, “Will they sell?” This is where we start to see a significant separation. While nearly everyone can sell, not everyone will. Many people simply have no interest in sales. Some may be too lazy or undisciplined to put forth the effort required to close sales while others may lack the clarity of focus toward key values that is necessary for sales success. And some simply do not value selling as a profession. You can, however, identify and hire candidates who will sell, yet even that is not the ultimate question you need answered. The willingness to sell, by itself may have been enough in the days when salespeople

simply ventured forth armed with a smile, a strong handshake and a case full of product samples and literature. Ironically today’s highly-competitive markets have even outdated the question, “Will they sell?” Intelligence And Personality Today, the crucial question to answer in finding successful value-based, customer-focused salespeople is, “Will they sell our products in this environment?” Now we have become very specific. Just because someone can sell a low-price, high-volume commodity item doesn’t mean they can sell big-ticket, long-term, low-volume items to a very high-level market. Our research has shown conclusively that intelligence has to be considered as a crucial quality in addition to personality when determining how someone will sell in a specific environment. Our research has revealed that in most sales fields the intelligence level of the salespeople fits into a relatively small band on the IQ scale. For example, with our clients who sell a demand product on a repetitive basis to relatively unsophisticated buyers, their top sales performers fall in the 40th to the 60th percentile in intelligence scores. With clients selling complex, highly expensive products exceeding several million dollars the top performers fall into the 70th to the 90th percentile level. Though few selling environments require a Mensa Society member to be able to sell the products, a high IQ can be an important attribute. However, one role of sales managers is to properly match intelligence levels with

Person Versus Personality

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the demands of his or her specific environment. For instance, in an environment selling very basic products, a salesperson with an exceptionally high IQ might become bored while repeatedly making the same simple sales presentation to apprentice buyers. That same high IQ salesperson, however, could easily find long-term satisfaction and success selling complex products that require complicated transactions with bright and demanding executives. While intelligence is an important factor to consider, personality will, nonetheless, play a role in sales success at all levels of selling. Obviously, a salesperson with a drab, negative and introverted personality would find little success in selling lavish vacation packages to the Mediterranean. And naturally, a salesperson with a superficial, glib personality would win the trust of few prospects who were concerned with the detailed data of complex financial transactions. The Key Attribute For Sales Success Though personality and intelligence clearly are important factors in sales success, the personal attribute that truly drives long-term sales performance is the value structure of the salesperson. How someone perceives and establishes priorities relates directly to their sales performance. Long-term success depends upon how a salesperson sees the world of selling, how they see themselves in that world and how they prioritize the multitude of demands that will be made on them by today’s highly crowded selling environments. How many times have you added someone

what appeared to be an outgoing, glittering, powerful personality, only to discover six months later that they could not perform? What you see in those cases is the true person emerging from the personality. All things being equal, personality is driven by needs. While that’s true, inner person is driven by their value structure. Here’s a good story that illustrates the importance of value structure over intelligence and personality in sales success. A close associate of mine was contacted recently by a collection services company that was in a panic over a saleswoman who was about to ruin their business. Here is the story in his words: “The collection company was terribly confused. For them, recruiting this woman had been a real coup. She had long been Number One in sales for a copier company. After years at the top of this fast-paced market, she had tired of its tempo. When she began looking to switch to a more even-tempered market, her search did not take long. With her outstanding credentials, the collection company hired her immediately?” “But nothing went right. This woman not only had terrible sales performance, but the collection company’s clients actually hated her. They were calling the office in droves, with comments like ‘Get her out of our face, or lose our business forever!” “When they called me, I met with her to administer our assessments. After reviewing her results, I knew immediately that she was wrong for the job. The copier market is very hard charging. In contrast, the collection agency dealt mostly with hospitals, which is a very soft, easy-going market.

They like to take time to think. She was driving them nuts. “While she apparently fit the classic mold of traditional salespeople, it was all based on personality. The person inside was not well-suited for connecting deeply with people who specialize in very personal, very human problems.” Forget About “Born” Salespeople Never again can you hire someone who has a good personality or who someone swears is a “born salesperson?’ To build a salesforce that will succeed into the 21st Century, you must advance to the next higher level. The sales personality is just as outdated as the old-school techniques we have warned you to retire. The personality required for long-range sales success in today’s crowded market is highly variable; the person is not. How somebody sets priorities, what they value most and their empathy for their fellow human beings is what will ultimately drive sales performance. Any reasonably intelligent person can master value-based selling. It is not the steps that trip them up, it is their attitude. While nearly anyone can learn the mechanical steps, achieving long-term success in sales requires the right person. Filling your salesforce with the right kind of people will answer the most important question for you as a sales manager: Will they sell our products in this environment? The good news is that we have now given you what it takes to perform in today’s crowded market. Developed by The Brooks Group, IMPACT Selling and all its principles will equip

to your salesforce who had

you for long-range, successful performance. Your remaining challenge is to fill your salesforce with people whose value structures match what needs to be done. Person Versus Personality Here’s a story that shows the significance of person over personality in sales success: I worked with a man named Jerry who was one of the first people I know to use a fax machine to close sales. As a person, he was tremendous at building trust. Jerry also had an exceptional sense of timing; he was the Smokey The Bear of sales: He could sense a close before it even came. The combination of the two attributes made him a powerful closer. When Jerry sensed the prospect was ready to buy, he acted as if they had already told him “yes” and offered to fax his office right there on the spot to get confirmation of their order. His sense of timing was so perfect that he did not want to let the moment pass, so he would say, “Let me do this, let’s write this up now and fax it into our office, so you will have immediate confirmation.” His prospects were so favorably impressed by the offer of an instant confirmation from the warehouse that they rarely resisted further. This method would never work with the stereotyped, traditional sales personality. If a salesperson had not built trust and rapport, it could appear extremely pushy. If the prospect still had lingering doubts or was beginning to feel trapped, this tactic could easily feel like the lid was slamming down on “the kill.” Instead, Jerry made the customer feel significant by giving their order the high-priority instant

attention he knew they wanted. The key to Jerry’s success was that his value structure enabled him to intuitively know when and what to do. Whatever someone sets as a priority, they will tend to do. Keep that truism in mind as you read these personal attributes while factoring in the special requirements of your specific market niche and products. Also, keep your own and your salesforce’s individual attributes in mind, carefully noting crossover attributes that may help you identify an unusual strategy like Jerry’s that taps unique attribute combinations in your salesforce. The new world of niche selling promises many challenges and great rewards. Niche selling is not merely a wave of the future; it is the reality of the present. Crowded markets, demanding buyers, price sensitivity

any companies have salespeople running all over the country while the

right hand (sales) does not know what the left hand (marketing) is doing. Marketing usually operates in one area, sales in another, and never the twain shall meet. The two never talk to each other. They are not in sync. They are not aligned. When that occurs in a crowded marketplace, your sales will flounder. The sales staff has to carry the marketing banner. There has to be consistency. When the two are aligned, the resulting consistency always produces improved sales. As a survey conducted by Learning International revealed, alignment is a real challenge for sales managers to address.

and intense competition will continue. The difference between the long-term winners and the also-rans lies in the sales strategies they employ. Success in the 21st Century and beyond will be simple but not easy: it will rely on value-based, needs-focused selling. It is my wish that the concepts and techniques I’ve given you here will be as powerfully effective for you as they have been for the thousands of others whom we have trained. Here is a final adage that sums up the most important factor in achieving long-term sales success: New ideas will never work unless you do. The challenge is yours. So are the opportunities... seize them. To complete your own free assessment, click here.

Any sales or marketing strategy can be either focused or diffused. The key to alignment is for sales and marketing to both work from the same focused strategy. Success cannot be expected if a misalignment occurs between two departments with ineffective, diffused strategies. Here are the distinctions between focused and diffused strategies: FOCUSED STRATEGY • Clearly defined • Well-known • Accepted DIFFUSED STRATEGY • Unclear • Unknown • Not accepted

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TRAINING WINNERS Aligning Your Marketing Strategies

Of course, any strategy has to be customer-focused to succeed, but it also must be plainly identifiable and be complete with training mechanisms for your staff. Identifying a successful, clearly-defined sales strategy will naturally be of no use if it is not known, or accepted by your salesforce. Once you train your entire salesforce, then your strategy will have the second element of being well-known. An important third element is that your sales staff also accepts the plan you use. It is our hope that the demonstrated successes we have seen with IMPACT Selling will give you an easy job of convincing your salespeople of its value. Once your staff accepts IMPACT Selling, then you will have all three elements of a focused sales strategy. The Strategy Alignment Matrix The possible strategies a company’s marketing and sales departments may employ can be depicted in four ways. First, both the marketing and sales strategies can

be focused. Clearly, this is the most effective combination. It is also possible for either one to be focused while the other one diffused. Finally, the worst case scenario, both strategies can be diffused. Here is a matrix that graphically illustrates the four possible combinations of marketing and sales strategies: On the left side of the Strategy Matrix chart you see the two possible sales strategies. Then, across the top of the chart, we have placed the two possible marketing strategies. The intersections of each heading in the matrix correspond to the predicted outcome of using one of the four possible combinations. We will now individually examine each of these four possibilities, providing anecdotes to illustrate each situation. Diffused Marketing And Diffused Sales Strategy Result: Failure Box number one shows that if neither your company’s marketing strategy nor its sales strategy are clearly defined, well-known and

accepted both inside and outside of your organization, then your company is DOOMED to failure. Your company will disappear in the crowded marketplaces of the 21st Century failure due to misalignment is not something new, but has been a fact of business life for centuries. We have merely given it a name and a place in our matrix. Finding companies to study where marketing and sales are both diffused is difficult because they do not last long. We won’t bother including examples of that lose-lose combination. If you want to read about some on your own, check your local courthouse for the latest Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings. Focused Marketing Strategy And Diffused Sales Strategy Result: Conflict And Low Sales In greater abundance are companies where their marketing strategy is focused while their sales strategy is diffused. The most notable characteristics of this common situation are internal, corporate. conflict and low sales. They may plod along for years, but their misalignment will ensure they never prosper. In these companies, marketing has done a terrific job of identifying prospects and may well have developed strategies that bring customers through the door in droves. Their problem, which they usually cannot understand, is why sales are not being closed. Internal corporate conflict develops and relations between sales and marketing

MARKETING STRATEGY DIFFUSED FOCUSED

FAILURE

MARGINAL SUCCESS

DIFFUSED

SALES

rapidly deteriorate to finger-pointing and accusations. The well-focused marketing department in one of these companies usually believes they are saddled with the worst sales department

CONFLICT/

LOW SALES

LONG-RANGE

SUCCESS FOCUSED

STRATEGY

in the world. While it may appear that way from their side of the fence because the right customers are being reached, the real problem lies with upper management. They have not ensured that both strategies are aligned. To learn more about this matrix, click here.

Here is a story that provides a good example of how misalignment of even a single salesperson can hurt sales performance: We consulted with a car dealership that was having trouble with a new salesman named Jim. His poor performance was a surprise to the sales manager because Jim had been the sales leader at a nearby Toyota dealer. For years, he had set regional records and bad a tremendous impact on the success of the dealer. In fact, Jim had used his exceptional performance to leverage his career, advancing to our client, a Porsche dealership. Once at his new job, though, his performance suddenly dropped and a deep conflict developed between Jim and his sales manager. Jim had a finely-honed sales strategy of his own which gave him great confidence. However, his poor closing rate led his manager to question Jim’s talents. The sales manager did not believe that Porsche’s marketing strategy was at fault. Clearly, Porsche’s marketing strategy was well-focused. They were masterful at targeting prospects who might buy high-end, high-performance luxury cars. It was equally evident that Jim was a top-notch professional. The immediate problem at this dealer was that the sales manager had not aligned his new hire with Porsche’s marketing strategy. The missing element was that the Porsche sales strategy was not yet known or accepted by Jim. Jim had continued using a sales

strategy that had served him well for years, but it met the needs of buyers who were more economy-minded. His former prospects had a completely different view of value in an automobile than Jim’s new Porsche prospects. Once we pointed out the misalignment, the sales manager worked with Jim so that he changed his selling strategy to fit in with Porsche’s marketing strategy. Shortly thereafter, Jim’s sales performance jumped dramatically. Here is a truism that I have emphasized to countless sales managers: The company and the salesperson both need to understand the power of positioning by alignment, and the salesperson needs to understand the power of personal positioning by alignment. Though the Porsche sales manager had a good sales strategy, it was not well-known to Jim. You can see in our Strategy Matrix that this put them in the box where conflict reigns. Had this former Toyota salesman immediately focused on the needs of his new customers, he would have automatically realigned himself personally with the well-focused Porsche marketing strategy. Diffused Marketing Strategy And Focused Sales Strategy Result: Marginal Success Let’s examine box number two on the grid and describe another type of company that floods the ranks of the bottom 80 percent group, and as such merely gets by. When marketing and sales are out of alignment in this direction, we always find marginal success and marginal profits at best, but little or no growth. A

company in this category may stay in business for years and be a well-known brand name because they will usually maintain moderate success. Still, their lack of alignment will never allow them to enter the top 20 percent. The obvious question, “Why do these companies survive better than when the misalignment is in the other direction?” That question has a simple answer: good salespeople can sell anything! I have done it; you have done it. When you turn a good sales staff loose with a good product and good product training, they will make sales. Salespeople who are well-trained can make things happen. Companies that rely on the natural instincts and capabilities of its sales people will experience limited success, but continually fall short of their long-range goals. Eventually customers tire of pushy sales pitches. Or worse, one of those customer-focused, “top 20 percenters” arrives on the scene. We saw a great example of this in our own offices with a saleswoman who called here. She worked for a collection service agency and came in to see if we needed what she was offering. We let her proceed because we were eager to see what would happen. Initially, she asked a couple of polite questions, but only because somebody had trained her to do so. Then she began to pitch her product in the classic sense. She was a stereotypical, high-energy salesperson and probably could have sold a fan in a wind storm. Seemingly, she was on a roll. About halfway through her well rehearsed pitch, she stopped, looked me straight in the eye and said, “If everything looks good to

you today, Mr. Brooks, is there any reason why we couldn’t do business today?” I knew immediately that she had been through extensive though outdated sales training. But I knew just as well that her company did not have a focused marketing strategy. Clearly they had made no marketing efforts to find prospects who needed their services. This story shows why I see alignment as an extension of leverage. Her company’s diffused marketing strategy had put her in a position where she was not making the most effective use of her time, talent or resources. She was simply going about a dally routine, hoping for something to happen. I see the problem of a diffused marketing strategy and focused sales strategy capsulated in an aphorism that has been around for years: You may need to take whatever comes along, but you also have to go after whatever you want. Your path toward getting whatever you want begins when both your company’s marketing strategy and its sales strategy are aligned. Only then will you experience success through long-range growth and high profits. Let’s now look at the alignment order that will put you in that top 20 percent of salespeople, tapping you into 80 percent of sales. Focused Marketing Strategy And Focused Sales Strategy Result: Long-Range Success This is the master key to long-range success in the crowded marketplaces of the 21st Century and beyond. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy need to be

developed in tandem from the ground up, with both focused squarely on the needs of your prospective customers. Your sales strategy has to be linked with marketing to leverage the advantages and opportunities that develop as a result of the advertising of your products or services. Linkage will be difficult unless the two strategies are developed concurrently. The power of alignment can be illustrated by comparing two prominent companies in the lady’s hosiery business. Industry leader L’eggs, with a focused marketing strategy and a focused sales strategy, has a solid lock on the top spot, despite having higher prices than competitors. This piqued our curiosity, so we studied their success. Here is what we found: At L’eggs, both marketing and sales are well-focused, targeting the high-end of the market. No-Nonsense is number two in the industry though they clearly beat L’eggs on price. No-Nonsense has a focused marketing strategy that targets the same high-end customers as L’eggs, yet their salespeople always push price because they do not believe they can compete with L’eggs. The expectation of the No-Nonsense sales reps seem to continually come true but not for the reasons they imagine. The true problem is that No-Nonsense salespeople mainly push their price advantage over L’eggs, which is in direct conflict with the marketing thrust of No-Nonsense. If the buyers were looking solely for discount hosiery, they could get even better deals from generic products. No-Nonsense should instead focus their salespeople where their marketing is on delivering a high-quality product to those customers who demand it. If

they adopted that strategy then store buyers would readily see that No-Nonsense offers a better value. The struggles of No-Nonsense in the hosiery industry are a classic example of the internal conflicts we always find when marketing is focused and the sales department is not aligned with that marketing. Here’s a truism you can bank on: price alone is rarely a key factor in buying decisions. Instead, the key factor in any buying decision is the perceived value to be gained by the buyer. Perceived value is why companies with the highest priced products and services in many industries often garner most of the market. We continually see lower-priced competitors scratching their collective heads in amazement at how they are continually beaten, though they offer the same product at a lower price. People rarely buy products; they buy value and most are willing to pay a fair price for the value they receive.

Leverage s a concept, leverage is nothing new in business. The traditional concept of leverage, however, only encompasses

maximizing your time, talent and resources. At The Brooks Group, we have refined the traditional idea of leverage by stressing that for leverage to work properly, it needs to be applied against the right fulcrum and that it must lift the right object. In the sales world, leverage means using your time, talent,

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resources or advantages to deliver maximum value to your customers. To be successful, your leverage has to be adaptable to fit specific prospects and customers. You will use your strengths to help them apply your products or services to create maximum value. Before you can implement leverage as a sales tool, you must create each of the three elements of leverage. You must create the lever and the fulcrum then place your fulcrum in your selected niche market. The third element - the object you will raise - is customer value. The fulcrum itself - what you apply opposing pressure against - is your competition. What, then, is the lever itself? It is you and your salesforce. You Are The Lever In Leverage The actual amount of time, resources and energy we have are finite, yet the way we use what we have can dramatically change the effective amount of each. At a recent high school reunion, I saw a terrific illustration of the ways different people get different effective results from a commodity they all have in relatively equal amounts. While there, I observed four ways that my classmates had used their time, resources and energies over the last quarter century. With our time, talent and resources, each of us is free to: INVEST: For which we get a return. SPEND: For which we may get little or

nothing in return. WASTE: For which we get nothing

in return. ABUSE: For which we suffer a loss. I saw these four ways of using time,

resources and energy in the lives of people I had grown up with. Those who invested their lives were easy to spot, it was visible in their body language even from across the room. When I met them and we talked, it became even more clear that they had invested their lives wisely, in return earning the dividends of success and happiness in abundance. Most of my classmates were clearly only part of the crowd. They were average, those in the middle of the bell curve. It is hard to distinguish between those who had spent what and those who wasted it because either may have received nothing in return. Using this large middle group as an analogy to companies, these are the ones who get by day-to-day, yet never prosper. Classmates at the other end of the bell curve, those who had abused their lives, were as easy to spot as those at the top. Alcohol and drugs had often been their best friends, turning them into the human equivalent of bankrupt companies. How Does Your Company Stack Up? Most likely your company has people in all four categories as well. The spenders have limited selling skills and are hard at work making cold calls. The wasters are the time-wasters, those who are experts at clock-watching techniques. The abusers are those who complain and sulk about failures, blaming outside circumstances for their troubles and often turning to alcohol or drugs for comfort. Naturally, for long-range success, we must be in the top category. We must be investors. In the 21st Century, any business that spends, wastes, or abuses its time, resources,

or energies will be overrun by better disciplined competitors. Leveraged salespeople are those who do the right things, at the right time, in the right place, with the right people for the right reasons. Spotting The Time-Wasters Here are some tips that will help you spot the classic activities in which salespeople either spend or waste their time: • Meeting with prospects who have no

need, ability or authority to buy nor have any sense of urgency.

• Spending excessive time getting organized instead of systematically employing a proven plan.

• Working with prospects whose demographic characteristics are inconsistent with those of the most common customers within your niche.

• Horizontal prospecting (the shotgun approach) instead of vertically integrating your product or service into existing clients, customers or markets.

To learn how to manage your time, click here. Sounds like standard sales practices, doesn’t it? That’s because very few salespeople employ value-based leverage. Most “old-school” selling programs focus only on decreasing price, concentrating on only half the equation by making deals like traders on the floor of a commodity exchange. Properly applying leverage in sales, i.e., using your time, talent, resources or advantages to deliver maximum value to your customers, will: • Position you favorably with other major

players in your market niche. • Distinguish you in the marketplace as

someone your prospects can trust.

• Maximize your sales opportunities by identifying the right people to see and when to see them.

• Prove the advantages of your product, service or company to your prospects.

• Raise the value of your products to the key prospects in your market.

In today’s crowded markets, if you do not serve your customers with the power of maximum leverage, rest assured someone else will. It is central to your success that you use these key elements to leverage your time, talent and resources: • Learn all you can about your market niche,

its needs, competitive factors and current delivery systems.

• Realize that there is a finite limit to the actual amount of time, talent, resources and energy you have, but that leverage will increase their effective amount.

• Deliver effective solutions that fulfill specific needs of prospects in your market niche.

Once you employ each of these elements, you will no longer be forced to act as a commodity trader. Instead, you and your sales staff will become value-based professionals delivering much needed services to a service-hungry market niche. Knowledge - The Raw Materials Of Leverage Knowledge-gathering is the dirty work of sales leverage, but nothing else will happen if you do not possess the raw materials. Before you and your sales staff can become instruments of leverage, your knowledge must include a well-versed understanding of: • Products and services offered by your

company and your competitors. • Pricing information and financial facts and

figures for your products and in your prospect’s industry.

• Familiarity with the demographics and geographies of your territory.

• The procedures and policies of your company and your prospect’s company; the “ins and outs.”

• Marketplace know-how such as trends, shifts, history, emerging players and economic forces.

• Networking experience that includes formal and informal relationships within market niches and trade associations.

• A long-range, macro view of the marketplace and a longitudinal view of future needs.

• Common mistakes made in the past by other salespeople within your niche such as poor service, growing too rapidly or taking customers for granted.

• A realistic assessment of how much time you can devote to new accounts without degrading the quality of your service to existing accounts.

• Current profitable accounts, so you can identify new prospects in your territory by comparing them to the ones you now serve successfully.

• What has traditionally been the single best source of your most productive accounts in the past.

• The needs your customers and prospects have that you can help them fill better than anyone else.

Once this information gathering is complete, your efforts will become highly effective. And effective you must be, for there will be no time to go back after near-misses. Your effectiveness must make you the laser-guided missiles of the sales world. When you become a lever forged from all your knowledge, skills and confidence, you will succeed as Luke Skywalker did in Star Wars when he put the missile right down the

middle of the exhaust port on the Death Star. Luke and his rag-tag Rebel forces succeeded because of leverage. With enough leverage you can do anything.

Listen People Into Buying

he best way to boost your customer impact is to cultivate an empathy for the customer and to understand his or

her needs, interests, and desires, and to know how to get them what they want. I based that idea on the wisdom I learned from an inspirational salesman who taught me the greatest secret of success in selling: The Greatest Secret In Selling: Show people what they want most, and they will move heaven and earth to get it! That secret comes from an anonymous source and was first revealed in print by Frank Bettger, who learned it from an “old timer.” Mr. Bettger used its power to make more than a million dollars in selling during the early years of this century. I will show you an easy-to-follow plan that will put the greatest secret in selling to work for you: Listen people into buying instead of talking your way out of the sale. Measure Your Prospects - Don’t Just Size Them Up One of the best ways to leverage your time is never to waste any of it “peddling” something that your customer does not want or need.

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You can avoid chasing such a dead end only if you listen to your customer talk about his or her needs. In other words, listen your way to a sale. I will use one of my favorite personal stories for an example. Imagine that your investigation has turned up a client who needs medical help. Then, in the Meeting phase with that client, you built a solid trust relationship with him or her. If you then switch on the traditional sales pitch for your best deal on your company’s latest hot product, it may go like this story I often tell: Doctors are great illustrations of service-providers who are expert at Probing; sometimes more so than anybody likes. Nevertheless, picture what could happen if doctors acted in the role of old-school salespeople? If your doctor did not probe, you might walk into an office one day and be greeted with a scenario like this: “Boy, are you in luck today!” he says. “I don’t feel so lucky… my head hurts like crazy!” you respond. “Know why you’re so lucky?” he asks, ignoring your comment. “We’re running a block-busting close-out on artificial hears... getting ready for the new models!” “But, Doc,” you protest, “it’s my head that hurts, not my heart.” “Yes, sir! I can fix you up with this Super Pumper model, that’s loaded with options, for an unbelievably low price. In fact, it’s a 40 percent savings. Besides, it’s all covered by your insurance. Could I schedule you for installation Tuesday or would Thursday be more convenient for you?” If you are like most of us you would run - not

walk - to the nearest exit. Sometimes it helps to look at a ludicrous example like this one to detect a fatal flaw in out-dated selling patterns. Many salespeople trained in traditional selling techniques are just that insensitive. Retold at one of your sales meetings, this story may serve to illustrate to your staff the importance of Probing for your customers’ needs. Skillful listening is an excellent way to avoid seeming insensitive toward your customers’ needs. The Fatal Flaw In Selling As sales consultants, we train thousands of salespeople every year. Our observations repeatedly show that most salespeople talk their way out of more sales than they talk their way into. Salespeople who subscribe to the “jawbone theory” of selling lose many sales they could make if they focused more on what their prospects want or need. Pushing the latest advances in their company’s product line will never reveal a customer’s need and always runs the risk of sounding like the pushy doctor in my story. Probing Gives You More Power Probing is at the very core of any customer-focused, value-based selling system. When you probe, you look beneath the surface to discover and reveal what is really going on in the prospect’s mind and heart. The dictionary defines a probe as an instrument used to penetrate, usually for investigating or measuring. As an action verb, to probe means to interview, to ask questions and listen, to observe, to study, Investigation enables you to discover what

the prospect wants and the conditions under which the person will buy what you are selling. It keeps you from wasting time on prospects who will not buy what you are selling under any conditions. More importantly, it uncovers needs you can meet and ways to suggest how to meet them. Measuring means to identify, clarify, and express your customers’ wants or needs. Many people have only a vague feeling that they want something but do not have the foggiest idea what it is. Others may have a deep desire they have never even admitted themselves. Some may think they want one thing, when what they really want is something entirely different. Still others know exactly what they want but do not know how to get it. Skillful and sensitive probing benefits both you and your customers. It leverages your selling time, making you more productive, and it helps the customer get something that everyone needs: value. Probing allows you to avoid the amateurish technique of holding up one product after another and asking, “Is this it?” Also, probing will make you a highly respected professional rendering a valuable service to your clients, a service for which you can expect to be paid very well. Finally, it will separate you from your competitors who are pitching price, features instead of benefits and value. To improve your communication skills, click here.

Probing also will improve your leverage. The scenario above, of holding up product after product, not only makes you look amateurish, but wastes your time. You do not have enough hours in a week to travel through today’s crowded marketplaces without a clue as to what prospects need. Carefully probing leverages your precious prime-time selling hours.

Principles -

Based Selling alue-based selling is not a technique, it is a principle. Techniques serve short-range goals and must be altered continually to keep up with the environment in which they are used. Principles, on the other hand, are timeless and will always apply. Countless selling techniques have been invented and amended, written about and taught, memorized and forgotten, loved and hated. Countless more selling techniques that we have not yet heard of will follow. Techniques in selling are like weapons in war; develop a hot, new one and it will produce great results until the other side develops either a defense for it or builds an improved version, based on what they learned from yours. That works fine with weapons, because wars are short-term. Your selling career, however, should be long-term and never viewed as a confrontation. Almost every selling technique ever created approaches selling as if it were a war, salespeople versus buyers. The prime reason techniques-based selling no longer works is described in the aphorism, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Today’s marketplace is crowded with

of us are highly unlikely to come up with a new killer sales technique and even if we did, it wouldn’t be long before massive overuse would make it trite. The only sales plans that will enjoy long-range success are ones based on principles instead of techniques. People will always buy what they want or need, but clever, tricky sales techniques may get them to buy things they do not need-once. Word of such tricks will travel quickly in a small market nice and your customer sources can evaporate like a puddle in July. However, a sales plan that is based on the unchanging principle that people will always fulfill their needs will succeed regardless of the techniques used to implement it. The principles behind the IMPACT Selling process keep you focused on the fulfillment of the customer’s needs so you will enjoy long-range success and find prosperity in the crowded marketplaces of the 21st Century and beyond. Our principles-based plan was developed over a period of more than 20 years. It has been tested and proven in virtually every segment of the selling world, producing impressive results. Whenever companies use IMPACT Selling there is a rise in sales and market share, whether the products are multi-million dollar leasing contracts or high-volume, low-priced novelty items. To learn about yourself, click here. Focus On Relationships

well with others is not the effective customer impact. I have met salespeople who were thoroughly likeable but could not sell ice water in a desert. The prospect making a buying decision must trust that you are sincerely interested in fulfilling their needs and that they are getting a good value. The ancient Greeks gave us a word that expresses the heart of a trusting relationship: symbiosis. It means “living together in a mutually beneficial relationship a relationship that provides enough benefits for all the partners to view it as valuable.” Symbiosis can ensure that you enjoy a win-win situation in your professional relationships. For the Impact Selling professional, that means always making sure that you fulfill your customers’ needs by giving them enough value to more than justify what they invest. You cannot achieve symbiosis through personality alone. The person behind the personality is what gives IMPACT Selling its power. An Effective Plan Needs Effective People You have surely met salespeople who seem to work shorter hours and enjoy their work more than most, yet make more sales and money than others of equal ability and training. What is the difference? Simply put, some salespeople are more effective than others. The next obvious question is, “What does it mean to be effective?” I have three definitions of effective that help

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salespeople and has been in operation so long, that nearly every effective technique has been so overused that the defenses went up long ago. In today’s marketplace you will meet hardened buyers, concerned with getting top value for themselves or their company, who have heard it all before. Most

Successful value-based, principle-based selling depends upon building and maintaining trust-filled relationships with prospective customers. Naturally, it includes being liked, yet goes well beyond that. Having a great personality and getting along

pinpoint the answer: • Strikingly impressive • Ready for service or action • Capable of producing a desired outcome

Combining those three definitions gives us a description of an IMPACT Selling professional: The IMPACT Salesperson: A strikingly impressive person, ready for service or action, and capable of producing maximum sales with minimum time and effort. Each of those three phrases relates to the kind of person you are inside, running much deeper than having a good personality or being a great joke teller. Remember that in symbiosis, all partners must view the relationship as valuable. Here is a detailed explanation of the three components of personal values that equate to being a highly effective salesperson: Strikingly impressive: Who you are. Impact grows out of the way you feel about yourself, about others, and about what you are doing. To understand your level of customer impact, you should ask the question, “What is there about me that would make people who are being

constantly deluged by my competitors want to buy from me?” Strikingly impressive salespeople will have more impact on their you the competitive edge to meet the demands of today’s tough-minded buyers. Capable of producing maximum sales with minimum time and effort: What you do. Nothing works unless you do, but there is more to it than that. Some of the hardest working salespeople in the world are also some of the least successful. IMPACT Selling involves doing the right things, at the right time, and in the right way, within your niche, to obtain the desired response. That can only happen when you put yourself in the prospective customer’s shoes and understand their needs. The best way to do that is to use these four Customer Impact Principles: • People only pay attention to those they

believe have something important to say to them.

• People buy for their reasons, not for yours or mine.

• People don’t want to be sold - they want to buy.

• Buying is basically an emotional response. Every sales professional who embodies all three of the personal qualities we covered and uses our four customer impact principles will be at the top of his or her profession and will be poised to stay there throughout a long and prosperous career. In other words, today’s IMPACT Selling professionals will be tomorrow’s sales leaders. Take It One Step At A Time You do not need to implement every one of these selling behaviors instantly. Integrating the whole plan one step at a time has enabled thousands of salespeople to double, or even triple, their sales. As you carefully assimilate each step, you can move on to the next one. You will begin almost immediately to notice a rise in your sales success. Within a few weeks, you will have internalized the system so well that you will be able to accomplish each step instinctively. When that happens, your customer impact and sales will soar dramatically.

constantly deluged by my competitors want to buy from me?” Strikingly impressive sales people will have more impact on their prospects and influence more of them to buy. Ready for service or action: What you know. Your most valuable selling tool is not your mouth - as most salespeople have been trained to believe-but your mind. High levels of customer impact grow out of what you know about people, about your market niche, about the selling profession and about what you are selling. You must master a value-based game plan that will give

E that questioneth much shall learn much,” said Francis Bacon. Nowhere in sales is that statement more true than in

the investigative phase. Asking the right questions can help you eliminate the problem of not having qualified prospects to call on at any given moment. I would like to share an important principle of value-based selling: In a crowded marketplace, all other thingsbeing equal, the one with the most

information, who applies it most effectively, wins. Translating that statement into a prospecting principle that you can use in your sales work, gives us: Power-Packed Prospecting Principle: The most productive sentence in the salesperson’s vocabulary always ends with a question mark

PROSPECTING TIPS

7 Power-Packed Prospecting Pointers

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Good prospecting is a matter of developing a solid game plan that works well for you, then following that game plan to the letter. We will now present some pointers we have developed that will help you formulate your game plan. To learn how to prospect effectively, click here.

The Prospecting Pointers The following ideas for Power-Packed Prospecting have been tested and proven effective by leading salespeople in all fields. These are our gems diligently collected through many years of experience in sales training and consulting. Look over these pointers with an eye for how you can apply them. Although you may be an established sales professional, you should find many of them useful personally. Another real value is to use them as training tools for your salesforce. Train them early to embrace these proven prospecting pointers: 1. Treat prospecting as the lifeblood of

your sales career. Not the clichéd definition, but Power-Packed

Prospecting: • Focus on quality. It is the only way you

can spend most of your prime time with qualified prospects. It is also the only way you can have enough hours in a week to be successful.

• Focus on quantity. Your success depends on having enough solid sales leads.

• Focus on consistency. A steady supply of qualified prospects can enable you to avoid slumps and plateaus, eliminate call reluctance and procrastination, and keep you from pressuring your current clients.

• Do it now. Increasing your prospecting effectiveness is the fastest single way to boost your sales and income.

2. Treat prospecting as your most valuable time management tool. Remember that you are always looking for ways to better leverage your time.

• Use it to avoid wasting prime time on people who are not qualified to say “yes.”

• Use it to ensure that you will always have enough qualified prospects to keep you productively busy.

• Avoid time wasting through sloppy or haphazard prospecting.

3. Take an organized approach. Never keep

leads on scraps of paper or Post-It notes. You can buy a computerized system or create one of your own. Whatever you choose, choose something that ensures you will never:

• Lose or forget about valuable leads. • Be late on promised follow-up calls and

visits. • Waste time looking for lost information. • Improperly value your prospect inventory. • Fail to do mailing and other foot work due

to a disorganized prospect list. • Become a compulsive procrastinator when

it comes to developing your prospect inventory.

4. Remain alert for “suspects” who have the

potential to become qualified prospects: In today’s fast-paced society, peoples’ needs may change rapidly and radically, giving you prospects where you never thought to look.

• Develop a prospecting mind set that automatically asks: “Is this person a prospect?”

• Assume all suspects are prospects until proven otherwise.

• Keep looking for new places to find prospects.

• Cultivate mutually beneficial relationships

with everyone who can give you leads or open doors for you.

• Take full advantage of every effort by your company to generate leads. Maintain close alignment with your company’s marketing department.

• Make it your policy always to secure referrals from satisfied customers.

5. Stay in constant touch with active

prospects through phone calls, periodic mailings, and personal contacts. Keep in mind the “Top of the Consciousness Principle” which states that:

• The only certain way to ensure your customers think of you first is through frequent, repetitious contact.

• Others are always competing for a finite amount of your prospect’s attention and dollars.

• You never know when your prospect’s motivation to buy will suddenly, dramatically increase.

• You need to be sure that he or she thinks of you or your product first when they evaluate how to fulfill their business needs.

6. Rework your suspect inventory

regularly to try to upgrade suspects to the status of qualified prospects. A good filing system will help tremendously.

• Learn how to use the telephone in a professional, pleasant, and businesslike manner. Then use it regularly.

• Constantly search for people who can give you a referral for every suspect on your list. Or, better still, will they make a contact for you?

• Look everywhere for the slightest clue that the suspect’s buying status might be changing.

7. Continually upgrade your prospecting

system and strategies: • For a steady flow of fresh ideas, you

should read books, journals, magazines and business news, listen to cassettes, attend seminars, and talk to other successful salespeople.

• If you are not now using a personal computer, you should be. Your competitors are. Computers are remarkable aids for prospecting and managing prospect information files. Make sure you get a system that will work easily and well for you and will grow with your needs.

• Above all, keep a positive attitude about prospecting. Make a game out of it.

Go back now and reread Power-Packed Prospecting Pointer #1: “Treat prospecting as the lifeblood of your sales career.” It definitely is, and here is a terrific story of the tremendous payoff that may await good sales detectives everywhere. Maybe this will soon be you: At one of our seminars we learned of a truck salesman from Indianapolis. I will call him Rich, whose investigative reporting paid off very well. Rich’s regular investigating uncovered an article in the newspaper about a local towing and recovery company that bad just been awarded an exclusive contract to handle all towing for downtown Indianapolis. But Rich had a sales dilemma on his hands: he sold Isuzu trucks. Traditionally, tow truck companies have a particularly macho male culture where big American trucks prevail; the bigger the better! Instead of seeing this as an impossible market, Rich continued to use his investi-gative skills and turned up a potential glitch in the contract for the towing company. Operating in the tight confines of downtown streets, they were required by contract to hook up and get out in less than ten

minutes. They could face penalties for adding to traffic congestion. When he learned that, Rich knew he could get the sale. His extensive investigative files included information he had stashed away earlier about an equipment manufacturer who had a special tow-truck device that reduced hook up time to less than five minutes. Further, his trucks were a small, medium-duty, “cab-over” design that made them short and highly maneuverable.

he most common error in selling occurs when salespeople are so

focused on what they or their company want from a sales relationship that they lose sight of what their prospects want from it. This fatal orientation will lose more sales more quickly than ever before in the buyer’s markets of the 21st century. Buyer’s markets are crowded markets; crowded markets are filled with buyers who are confused and sellers who use out-dated, “me-too” marketing techniques. Because of the crowding in today’s markets and confusion among buyers, they are now prone to view apparently similar products or services as similar. The key to success in a crowded market is to find what buyers value most, then point out the unique advantages of your product or service. When you focus on what the customer values most, you create perceived value that makes your product stand out from the crowd and leads to a buying decision. Don’t Outnumber Your Customers Think of where to direct your focus in

Rich put the two together and showed the towing company how to meet a very pressing need. Combining the resources of his investigative files, he was able to structure a sales opening for that tow truck dealer that practically ensured a sales closing before Rich walked in the door. This is a perfect illustration of the truism: The key to a successful close is knowing how to open.

this way: of the four areas where you can focus - self, company, product or customer - if you focus on the first three, your customer is out-numbered three to one. People who are overwhelmingly out-numbered feel confused and uncomfortable. People who are confused and uncomfortable rarely make buying decisions. Most sales organizations have rallied their troops against their number one adversary: their customers! The reasoning has been that if the Salesforce is trained to maximize their personal gains, the traditional sales pitch demonstrates a hot new product, and the company makes bold claims about itself, then the customer will fall like prey to the hunter. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule as it has come to be called, helps describe what goes on in selling today. Our research confirms that nearly 80 percent of sales-people today conduct presentations with a focus on self, product or company. Our studies also show that group - those who are institutionally insulated from their customers - accounts for only 20 percent of the sales

Don’t Outnumber Your Customers

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made in the marketplace. Conversely the remaining 20 percent of sales representatives focus on the needs and wants of the customers. This group accounts for fully 80 percent of all sales! Failure to focus on customers’ wants or needs will place you in the bottom 80 percent of sales professionals or sales organizations, who generate only a small fraction of the sales they could be enjoying. Customer Focus Or Die! At the bottom of the non-customer focused group, “the bottom 80 percent,” we see salespeople who are survival driven. These people worry that if they do not make a sale today then the electricity will be turned off tomorrow. The paradox is that no one wants to buy from someone who is desperate, particularly in the face of an abundance of other options. Customers themselves cannot survive by acting as a welfare agency to hard-pressed salespeople. Self oriented salespeople in this, group focus on quota. To them, it does not matter what the customer wants or needs, but only that they “meet Quota” on Product X. Quota focusers often achieve the minimum to get by nothing more, nothing less. They have no emotional commitment to their job, they are just doing as they are told. In a crowded, competitive niche, the salespeople in this category are going to lose their customers to those who go beyond the minimum. Also in this bottom 80 percent are those who push products. Often these salespeople have been hyped up with a sales contest. We believe strongly that, at best, sales contests can only lead to short-range victories and

may have seriously detrimental effects on long-range success. You can identify product-driven salespeople by their well-practiced and smoothly delivered “sales pitch.” They have been trained that if they deliver their presentation with consistency, someone eventually will buy. Others in the bottom 80 percent focus on company. You may hear them brag about their company saying: “we’re the biggest in the industry,” as if that alone will make customers buy. From Hertz and Avis, to IBM and Apple, to CBS and CNN, every industry is replete with companies who believed that sheer size and industry position in themselves would guarantee market share. If your standard presentation is always focused on your company’s size or reputation, what will you sell if a competitor outgrows you, or if a flurry of bad news should tarnish your company’s reputation? The only sales organizations and sales reps that will prosper throughout the 21st Century are those in the top 20 percent, those that focus on their customers’ wants and needs. And, even the top 20 percent has a hierarchy of its own. Within that group, we discovered that those in the top five percent accounted for 60 percent of sales. The remainder of the group - 15 percent, accounted for 20 percent of sales. While that is as much as the entire bottom 80 percent, it is still only a fraction of the per person results enjoyed by the top five percent. This remarkable finding prompted us to dig further to identify the cause of such disparity in sales effectiveness. Here is what we found:

While all sales organizations and salespeople in the top 20 percent focused on their customers, the difference between the two groups was that the top five percent focused on their customers’ needs, while the remaining 15 percent focused on their customers’ wants. Both groups within the top 20 percent are successful sales professionals. Both have a focus that is outer-directed toward their customers and never inner-directed on themselves, their products, their company, or on a quota. Both will survive in the crowded markets. Still, the very top performers are those who identify the deepest needs of their customers and find ways to fulfill those needs. Outer-Directed Orientation At Work An outer-directed orientation produces top performers in any field, not just in sales. Here’s an anecdote to help illustrate the observation. The Brooks Group once worked with two major clients that were top-flight organizations, the Atlanta Hawks and the Detroit Pistons, The Hawks have had some great players and from season to season were able to achieve some outstanding successes, but they hadn’t made a serious title run in a long, long time. The Pistons, on the other hand, also had very talented players. We gained some valuable insights through our work with the Pistons’ coaching staff. The coaches told us that their best players had a unique ability to rise above an inner-directed focus, delivering an effort that transcended their own short-term, immediate needs.

Their focus was more on the team than on themselves and that outer-directed focus could be clearly seen through the results it delivered: championships! It is equally true on a basketball court as in a sales presentation. Top performers are outer-directed, focusing on the needs of others. The idea of shifting your focus to the customer is not a deep philosophical issue, though it is more of an emotional issue and it is an intellectual one. It is straight-forward and produces easily measured results.

arefully coordinated linkage between your company’s sales strategy and its marketing strategy is crucial for long-

range success in a crowded market. I want to illustrate the importance of having your entire company focusing on its customers. In company after company I see it is not enough for sales to fly solo. If your sales strategy is not closely linked with the strategy of your marketing department, then your company will fail or produce mediocre results at best. First, let’s clarify the differences between sales and marketing - many salespeople do not understand the distinction: Marketing strategy is what gets you to the customer’s door in the best possible light. Sales strategy is what you do when you are inside. Most marketing departments regard salespeople as something akin to peddlers. Today’s highly competitive,

Inner-directed salespeople are at the bottom, outer-directed ones are at the top. Within the bottom group, those who are merely average focus on their company or their product. The least successful focus on themselves. Within the top group, many highly successful salespeople focus on their customers’ wants. You’ll see them in the middle of the pack. To learn how to be a sales pro, click here.

The cream of the crop, however, are those exceptional sales professionals who focus totally on their customers’ needs.

crowded markets will no longer be forgiving toward companies who are divided internally. You need to present a unified message, both outside and inside their door. A successful sales strategy is one that focuses on the customer and leverages your time, talents, resources and advantages. That focus will show you how to position yourself as a selling professional in a way that is consistent with your marketing department. Few sales forces use a successful sales strategy. Even fewer are aligned with their company’s marketing department. Some don’t have any idea of the responsibilities of a marketing department. Learning International of Stamford, Connecticut, completed a study in which they polled corporate marketing executives and sales managers to compare how they would answer the same questions. One question asked the respondents to list what they though salespeople needed most. Among marketing executives “selling skills” ranked at the top of their list, while that choice on the sales

managers poll ranks nearly last. Instead of “selling skills,” the sales mangers placed “marketing strategy” at the top of their list. Clearly, companies with such gross discrepancies in their answers to a survey are not employing the power of alignment. The Power Of Alignment Though they are closely related, selling is merely one component in a company’s total marketing system. Marketing and sales must be closely aligned to meet the new demands of today’s markets. Creative salespeople have discovered they can dramatically improve their alignment by learning from at least two types of marketing specialists: marketing research and advertising. Marketing research concerns itself primarily with finding out what people want, while advertising seeks to interpret how products and services will give people what they want. Both functions are highly sophisticated in today’s complex business world, yet the principles behind them are simple. Marketing strategists use polls, interviews, and a host of other tools to determine the needs of the people they hope to reach with their products or services. The advertising specialists then develop ad campaigns to convince potential customers their products or services will meet those needs. It is a highly effective combination. Yet, marketing sometimes misses its targets and can be fine-tuned or even revamped completely by using input! from salespeople. Salespeople have an advantage over marketing specialists because market

Personal Positioning By Alignment

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researchers must rely on generalities, and advertising people must address masses of people with their campaigns. Salespeople on the other hand, talk directly with individual prospects daily, probing for their deepest needs and desires. Salespeople must not merely uncover their prospects’ deepest needs, but also find out how each of them perceives those needs. The perceived need is usually a more powerful motivation for buying than the actual need. Here is an illustration of the difference between perceived needs and actual needs and how aligning sales and marketing with the difference can have a dramatic impact on a company’s success: According to management expert Peter Drucker, half a century ago International Business Machines, Inc. was struggling to survive in the highly competitive office machines market. Their primary customers seemed to believe they had all the business machines they needed and showed little interest in buying more from a relatively unknown firm. Fortunately for the company, their top salespeople took a value-based approach to selling and began to ask their potential customers what they perceived their needs to be. “We need better ways of processing information,” summed up the substance of their needs. No one said they wanted to buy machines, yet they had plenty of work to do that could be done by office machines. International Business Machines, Inc. translated this newly revealed perceived need into an actual need of more business machines. With that knowledge, the entire company revamped its selling approach,

aligning itself with the information gathered by their sales department. The name of the company was changed to IBM. Marketing began to advertise their products as “data processing systems and information management systems” instead of office machines, while the sales department began providing professional assistance in increasing office productivity and in setting up the systems to do it. Thus, by addressing their customers’ perceived needs, instead of relentlessly pushing their products, IBM soon began to dominate the names market where they had nearly failed earlier. Imagine where they would be today if their salesforce had not interacted with marketing to change the alignment of the whole company! The aligned coordination between the two departments became a powerful lever that transformed a struggling company. Many companies have salespeople running all over the country while the right hand does (sales) does not know what the left hand (marketing) is doing. Marketing usually operates in one area, sales in another, and never the twain shall meet. The two never talk to each other They are not in sync. They are not aligned, and you as a sales professional are not personally positioned to maximize your sales efficiency. Personal Positioning By Alignment When you are not aligned with your marketing department in a crowded marketplace, your sales will flounder. The sales staff has to carry the marketing banner There has to be consistency. When the two are aligned, the resulting consistency always produces improved sales. As the survey by

Learning International revealed, alignment is a real challenge for sales managers to address. Complete alignment of a company’s marketing and sales strategies culminates in well-positioned, one-on-one personal sales presentations. Even if your company has the most highly focused marketing strategy ever devised and you use a highly focused sales strategy, individual salespeople can diminish the effectiveness of the whole organization if they do not personally align themselves with the corporate thrust as they face prospects. The company can help to get the salesperson inside the door. The individual needs to assume control once inside and maintain a strict focus on customer needs; this is the power of personal prospecting.

RAPPORT BUILDING TIPS The Greatest Secret In Selling

he best way to boost your customer impact is to cultivate an empathy for the customer and to understand his or her

needs, interests, and desires, and to know how to get them what they want. I based that idea on the wisdom I learned from an inspirational salesman who taught me the greatest secret of success in selling: The Greatest Secret in Selling: Show people what they want most, and they will move heaven and earth to get it!”

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That secret comes from an anonymous source and was first revealed in print by Frank Bettger, who learned it from an “old timer.” Mt Bettger used its power to make more than a million dollars in selling during the early 20th Century. There is a story in Mr. Bettger’s book, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, that illustrates just how powerful this secret is: As a life insurance salesman, Frank Bettger called on a successful businessman named Scott and asked him for five minutes of his time, promising to leave after that unless the client asked him to stay longer. Mr. Scott agreed but assured him it would be a waste of time for both of them, since he was 63 years old and had long before quit buying insurance. Mr. Scott further explained that all his children were grown, his wife was well protected with paid-up life insurance, his business was well covered, and his estate plan and will had all been carefully prepared. That would have been enough to send most insurance salespeople packing, but not Frank Bettger. Mr. Bettger applied the secret he knew about selling. He had done his homework and knew that Mr. Scott was a highly benevolent man who had often given generously to worthwhile causes. “Mr. Scott, a man who has been as successful as you surely must have some interests outside your family and your business,” Mr. Bettger suggested. “Perhaps a hospital, religious work, missionary or charitable work,” he continued. He then listed a few he knew Mr. Scott had supported. “Did you ever consider that when you die,

your support will be withdrawn? Wouldn’t this loss seriously handicap or even mean the discontinuance of some splendid work?” At that, the salesman glanced at his watch, noted that his time was up, and thanked his host for his time. But Mr. Scott invited him to stay and talk some more. Frank Bettger used the additional time and the confidence he had gained very carefully Instead of seizing the moment to spill out everything he knew about insurance, he continued to ask questions. Those questions revealed that the work nearest and dearest to Mr. Scott’s heart was the work of three missionary teams in Nicaragua that he supported. Mr. Bettger also learned that one of those teams included Mr. Scott’s son and daughter-in-law, and that he was planning to visit their work soon. “Mr. Scott,” he finally asked, “when you go down to Nicaragua, wouldn’t you be happy to tell your son and his young family that you had just guaranteed that if anything ever happens to you, a check will come to them every month, so their work may continue? Wouldn’t you also like to write to the other two missionaries, giving them the same message?” There was a long silence. Mr. Bettger waited. Then Mr. Scott thanked Frank Bettger for helping him discover a serious oversight in his planning. No pressure had been applied, and no tricky closes had been used. The old pro had simply shown his prospect what he had wanted most, and the prospect had made a decision to buy. He had not tried to sell insurance; he had shown Mr. Scott that what he really wanted was for the missionary work to continue after he could

no longer support it. After tying down the sale, Frank Bettger walked out of that man’s office with a check for $9,000, when $9,000 was a whopping insurance premium. That is impact selling—and it works! Thousands of sales people use the secret daily to close sales in nearly every business you can name: insurance, capital equipment, automobiles, industrial supplies, real estate, and on and on. Yet, for every sales person using it, there are ten who do not and yet wonder why they close so few sales. Let’s review that secret one more time: Show people what they want most, and they will move heaven and earth to get it!

Your prospects will move heaven and earth to buy from you, but only after you have shown them what they want most. That simple secret will revolutionize your selling career if you memorize it and use it on every sales call. To learn how we turned these 20th century ideas

into 21st century results, click here.

How To ReduceTension And Establish Trust

ost of your prospects see a sales call as an interruption to things they see as more significant or productive. A

salesperson is often viewed as an intruder, a money-grabber, a beggar and sometimes even as an inconsiderate, unethical villain. At best, many polite prospects tend to see themselves as being nice to a fellow human or as doing you a favor. Unless you can change that basic attitude and atmosphere, you are doomed before you get started. Before successful selling can begin, tension must be greatly

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reduced. Completely eliminating tension is impossible and not necessarily desirable. A certain amount of tension is healthy and normal in an effective sales relationship. However, your prospects do need to feel that you are a trustworthy person, that you have something important to say to them and that they might benefit enough to justify the time they invest in listening to you. That is a tall order, yet we will add another dimension to make it even taller: You have only a matter of minutes-possibly only seconds to establish your credibility and convince a prospect that time spent with you will be productive. Let us now look at two very effective strategies used regularly by successful sales professionals to reduce tension and establish trust: winning the inner game and creating trust. To Eliminate Tension You Must Win The Inner Game Prospects can read you like a book. They can instantly sense your confidence level, your attitude about selling and what you are selling, your feelings toward them, and your personal comfort level toward being with them. It shows in your eyes, your gestures and movements, and even in your tone of voice. You simply cannot consistently fake your way through the inner game of selling and be a winner in the outer game. “But I can’t change the way I think and feel!” is one protest we hear repeatedly. Hold on, we have good news for you! You can change even your most basic attitudes and thoughts.

It starts when you begin replacing your negative, self-limiting thoughts with positive thoughts and insights. You will experience a real change in the way prospects respond to you when you begin feeding your mind with positive thoughts. Remember, if you are a sales manager, your attitude affects far more than your own career. Here are some thoughts that will be especially valuable for you personally as well as for your entire salesforce. • Selling is an honorable profession that is

worthy of my best efforts. • I am a capable and confident salesperson. • My purpose for being here is to enable this

person to discover what he or she wants most and how to get it.

• I am a value generator for this person and all of my clients. I concentrate on value and constantly seek to deliver it.

• The company I represent is a solid firm that seeks to deliver greater value than it receives in payment for its products and services.

• What I am selling has a greater value to people than the money they will pay for it. I will see to it that they get what they pay for, and more.

• I will not rely upon high pressure to make this sale, but will concentrate on having a significant impact upon this customer.

• When I finish this interview, I will leave behind a happy customer who will feel good about my company and me.

When you begin to see yourself in the light of that list of statements, you will be happily amazed at how much more warmly your prospects will receive you. More importantly, once you come to embody every one of those statements, you can spread them to your salespeople. Increased self-esteem will reduce tension among your clients and build their

trust in you. That powerful development will leverage the selling time of an entire sales- force as your customers become interested in what you want to happen. You Have To Create Trust The natural condition that exists at the beginning of any selling situation is tension, even when your prospects are close friends or relatives. We could build a seminar around all the factors that cause such tension, but you have probably experienced enough of it to know how real it is. High levels of tension may exist between your prospects and you until you take action to reduce it. So, we will focus now on what you can do about it. Here are three techniques we have developed that many sales professionals find very helpful: First, eliminate any unnecessary tension inducers before you make the sales call. That includes things like being neat in appearance and dressing in a way that will make your prospects feel you are one of them. “This is a free country,”a novice salesperson once told an old pro. “I can dress as I please, wear my hair a I please, and drive any kind of car I choose; and no one can stop me!” “You’re right!” responded the seasoned veteran, “and that prospect can exercise his freedom to say ‘no’; and nobody can stop him!” All you need to do is notice your reaction to the way strangers look and you will agree how important it is to make a good first impression.

Second, look for tangible ways to help your prospects relax. A quiet manner, a mild sense of humor, and a warm smile can go a long way toward breaking down barriers between you and your prospects. A short, humorous, personal story that identifies you as a real human being can often do wonders to help people relax, especially if you listen while they tell you a story in return. Notice that we said humorous, personal stories, not jokes. Be extremely careful about telling jokes. Most people do not tell many jokes, and they feel uncomfortable around salespeople who do. Besides, it takes special skill to tell jokes that really score a hit with everyone. Moreover, in today’s hyper-sensitivity to “politically correct” language, it takes a genius to tell one that will not be offensive to someone. If your customers wanted to buy from comedians, they would go to a night club and find a really good one. You are a sales! professional, not a stand-up comedian. For the same reasons, use one-liners very cautiously. If you start out by telling a big joke or just set up a series of one-liners and nobody laughs, where do you go from there? Unless you have a ready sense of humor that most people can easily identify with, concentrate on selling. Otherwise, you may look ridiculously awkward trying to transition from failed jokes to selling your product. Consider the whole idea of salespeople as comedians in light of how it may impact your credibility. By starting with jokes, the subtle message to your customers is that you know what they will find funny. If they do not, then what will they think when you change the subject and tell them you think you know what they want in their business?

Third, be a good guest. When you are in someone’s office, home or workplace, you are on their turf. You are bound by etiquette and common courtesy to observe the “house rules.” For example, you might feel comfortable putting your feet on a coffee table, but if you do that with some prospects, they will immediately identify you as insensitive and start looking for ways to get rid of you and your bad manners. Smoking cigarettes is a serious turnoff with many people these days; in many workplaces, smoking is forbidden. A cigar is rarely acceptable. If you smoke, never light up unless your host does and then only after asking permission. Your bad manners can turn off even an otherwise determined buyer. This illustration will show you how your demeanor can affect your sales: Recently, I was called upon by a seasoned salesman, a veteran of more than twenty years of selling. He wanted to show me his line of exclusive – and very expensive – Cuban designed suits. His products were beautiful, impressive examples of excellent craftsmanship and he know the business and his line of products very well. Yet, while I was admiring the workmanship and his knowledge, he dragged his briefcase carelessly across my desk – scratching it slightly – and then used my phone to contact another prospect, expecting me to wait patiently for him to finish. I didn’t really mind his being on the phone, though, because when he wasn’t tying up my line, he dominated the conversation with boring, trite stories and a steady stream of stale jokes. As impressive as his suits were, I couldn’t stand to keep him in my office long enough

to place an order I thanked him for coming and then asked him to go. The idea that your manners can make or break your sales career is not some theory we’ve dreamed up; it’s a completely valid and unforgiving concept. That is enough of the negatives. This topic began with a list of positive things you can say to yourself. We will finish now with another. One of the best ways to gain trust is to receive any hospitality your hosts offer graciously To many people, offering a drink or snack is a way of saying, “Let’s be friends.” Turning down an offer of kindness from a client can be interpreted as saying, “No! I’d rather be a stranger.” This is yet another way in which you can let the customer leverage your own skills. Allow them to like you. Remember, tension is a natural state that exists in the selling situation. It will not go away without your efforts. You must take positive steps to create a level of trust that eliminates or reduces the natural state of tension before successful selling can begin.

MOTIVATION TIPS

Selling During The Lean Times

ost anyone is receptive to new ideas when they have the time to listen. Often, though, there are periods in

everyone’s life when everything seems to be falling down around them. During those struggles, most people drop back to a survival mode. New ideas seem like something best put off for a day when the wolf is not baying at the door. This shifting of focus is a natural response to hard times in our lives. Focus On Your Customers And Never Look Away In business, the same thing happens. Hard economic times often cause companies to retrench into a survival mode. During those retrenchments, there is a natural tendency for salespeople to shift their focus away from customers’ needs to income, survival or quota. The logic may be, “It won’t matter whether our focus is on our customers’ needs if we go out of business. For now, we’ve got to meet our quota for this quarter, then we’ll worry about the customers!” While that is a natural tendency NEVER let it take your focus off the only thing that will bring you success in today’s crowded marketplaces: your customers’ needs. If you are retrenching, probably everyone else is, too. They will most likely shift their focus to themselves and concentrate on survival. That is the best time to ask yourself, “How can I serve this prospect’s deepest need?” Your customers are probably retrenching, too. More than ever, they need someone who will focus on their needs, which may be getting desperate.

A downturn in the economy hence can be used to leave your competitors in the dust. Since even fewer salespeople will be focusing on your customers’ needs, when you refuse to lower your focus, you will stand out more than ever before. The reputation you build for yourself during tough times will long be remembered. We found one young man who had these principles down cold. Here’s how he sold expensive equipment when few others were and made a long-term friend of a client: Helping Others Helps You A young medical equipment salesman named Randy was only a year out of college. His company had come out with a new product that was innovative, creative and state-of-the-art. This new machine automated the analysis of spinal injuries and generated a detailed report that speeded the doctor’s work tremendously. Though very expensive, it was clearly the best product on the market. Its capabilities were so exceptional it could increase a physician’s business and income by drawing patients from a wider area. One day Randy called on a prominent neurosurgeon in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The doctor had a large practice and a national reputation that brought him all the patients he could handle. He quickly told the salesman he had no interest in a machine that would draw more patients. Randy, though still new to sales, remained focused on his target. He continued to ask questions of the

surgeon, probing for the doctor’s most dominant needs. By persisting, he discovered that though the surgeon did not need to enhance his practice, he was looking for ways to reduce the time he spent handling what he already had. Randy discovered that one of the doctor’s most time-consuming tasks was giving court depositions, though they added little to his income. While Randy was focused on his prospect’s needs, he also knew his product well. He quickly told the surgeon about the ability of his product to display its data automatically in an objective format that was easy to understand and would be accepted in court depositions. The real kicker was that the machine produced the data in color, which was the most meaningful need the doctor had in handling court depositions. As you guessed, the doctor placed an order with Randy. Randy’s story is a good example of something that few would have seen as a major selling feature. Yet, by focusing on his prospect’s needs, he hit the target dead-center, and he got much more than the commission from making a large sale. That surgeon no longer thought of Randy as a salesperson, but as a trusted business colleague who had helped him fulfill one of his most pressing needs. By helping someone else find direction, Randy enhanced his own sense of direction, too. The key for Randy was knowing his product, being on top of a rapidly changing industry and focusing on his prospect’s dominant needs.

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The Fastest Way To Revenue The more you need the money, the more narrowly you have to focus on customer needs. I learned that the hard way, struggling for several years before finally seeing the light and making a permanent change: In 1983, my fledgling company was among several who were trying to market a sales training program to the Chevrolet Division of General Motors. Back then, The Brooks Group consisted solely of a part-time secretary and myself, though I was closely counseled by my mentor and close associate, Ron Willingham. General Motors had expressed the desire for a complete new sales program to guide each of its 27,000 Chevrolet sales representatives in the U.S. In short, it was an enormous undertaking and to me the contract represented the very foundation of The Brooks Group. With Ron’s assistance, I worked on selling General Motors the training program for nearly three years. During that time we built terrific frequent flier mileage accounts from our trips to Detroit, placed hundreds of long-distance phone calls and wrote countless letters. Each step of the way, Ron and I tried to keep our focus clearly on what General Motors truly needed. We had to; that was the very concept we were selling! Our company did well in the competition for the contract. We took the lead, and soon stood at the top of the crowd. It appeared that we were actually going to win the contract and my dream was going to come true: teaching our customer-focused, needs-based selling system to thousands of salespeople.

At that point, something happened: I found it extremely difficult to get my mind off those dollar signs. They were going to pay the contract on a “per-head” basis! Can you imagine how much money that equaled? It was more than I had ever dreamed. We were going to be very well paid. Predictably, we began to encounter snags with the contract. During the negotiations, I fortunately realized that my focus had shifted from their needs to my revenues, and understood the danger such focus represented in nailing down the contract. Recognizing how my focus had shifted, I refocused on the needs of General Motors, made more visits and phone calls and got things back on track. Intermittently my lack of experience and discipline allowed my focus to drift. I began, once again, to think about the new car I might soon be able to buy, the new house I could plan and the better life I could provide for my family. It was during this period that I began to understand why my focus kept shifting and I was able to learn the discipline to redirect my focus. I fixed my focus back in on the needs of General Motors and kept it there until we won the contract. Throughout that entire consulting assignment, the only time that the proposal went smoothly was when I focused on their needs instead of my own. Like most things in life of any value, it went badly every time I focused on myself. Paradoxically the more you need the money the more diligently you must focus on your customer’s needs. Customer focus is not a fad; it is the only certain formula for success in the 21st Century Today’s crowded marketplaces truly demand it. Your customers’ needs will never include making you rich or raising the value of your company’s stock.

Ironically we have found that nearly every salesperson we meet already knows at least the basic needs that their products or services can fulfill. Yet few of them truly understand that using that knowledge is the best way to sell their company’s products or services. Traditional sales techniques have never focused on the customer’s needs. Instead, they have focused on the product or the company behind the product, or taught salespeople to focus on themselves. If the sharp, clearly defined center of interest or activity in your sales career has been on self, company or product, then your career may not survive a lean period in the economy. The key to success in a down-turn is to find what buyers value most, then point out the unique advantages of your product or service. When you focus on what the customer values most, you create perceived value that makes your product stand out from the crowd and leads to a buying decision. To learn how to sell through good times and bad, click here.

Discovering What People Will Buy: Asking The ‘Right’ Questions

major objective for a value-based salesperson is to discover what your prospects will buy, why they will buy it

and under what conditions they will buy it. The master key for determining those answers is in asking the right questions. Often, though, salespeople have no idea what to ask.

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How Not To Discover What People Will Buy “Oh, I ask a lot of questions,” a young furniture salesman once said, very confidently. Yet his sales manager had relayed to us that the man was working on his last chance because his sales had been so few and far between. “What kinds of questions do you ask?” we probed. “When people walk into the store, I usually ask, ‘Can I help you?’,” he said. “Usually they want to look around a little, so I just back off. When I see that they’ve found something they seem to like, I go right up and ask, ‘Can I fix you up with that bedroom suite today’?” After seeing how often salespeople ask questions like that, we began to develop techniques to introduce them to a much more effective line of questioning. “What do you learn from asking ‘Can I help you?’,” we asked him. “I learn whether they want to buy something, or if they are just looking around,” he answered. “How many people have told you they wanted to buy something when you asked them that opening question during the last week?” I pressed. “Oh, let’s see.. .1 think there have been two, but we didn’t have what one of them was looking for,” he said sadly. Ask And Ye Shall Learn (If Ye Ask the Right Questions)

Can you see how little information that young salesman learned by asking his two unfocused questions? Let us list what he learned: • He learned his prospects could talk. • He learned they were not going to take his

furniture away from him. • He learned (by prematurely asking a bad

closing question) that they were not ready to make a buying decision.

Now we will examine the difference between what this salesman’s questions taught him and what negative effects they had: • He was presenting himself as a servant

instead of a skilled professional. “Can I help you?” is the type of question people expect from the Salvation Army after a natural disaster, not from a sales professional!

• His questions set up a high probability for a negative response. Questions that call for a “yes” or “no” produce about ten times as many “no” responses as “yes” answers.

• His line of questioning gained him no insight about what his prospects wanted. They told him nothing of what needs they were seeking to satisfy, what they would buy, or under what conditions they would buy it.

• He was trying to close before he sold anything. He was asking for a buying decision before he built any value for his prospects.

You can see his questions did more harm than good. We saw that this salesman would soon be out of a job unless he learned how to ask the right questions. We had to help this guy and we had to help him fast. How To Discover What People Will Buy

Here are some tips we gave him about how to ask the right kinds of questions. We’ve developed a set often powerful questioning pointers: PROBING TIP #1: Prepare the questions you will ask in advance. While every prospect is unique and every selling situation requires some variation, certain basic questions that come up in every interview can be planned and practiced. Through careful planning, you can make sure you uncover the essential information and that your wording is precise. Since you will most likely get a great deal of practice with these questions, there is a note of caution: Be careful never to allow them to sound canned. Rephrase or refine them regularly to ensure originality and vitality. One tip for keeping your question sounding fresh is to follow the example of television journalists. These professionals will open an interview with things like: “Tell me about” or “What are your feelings concerning..?” This approach generates a unique response every time because no two people will feel exactly the same way about anything. If your questioning instead always begins with the same curt, canned question, you may begin hearing a lot of the same curt, canned answers. PROBING TIP #2: Ask open-ended and indirect questions. Sales questions that require only a “yes” or “no” answer tend to discourage people from talking. They also give you only limited information and set a negative tone. Ask open-ended questions that require prospects to tell you how they feel, what they want, or what they think.

For example, returning to the young furniture salesman mentioned earlier, he might have asked: “Let me ask you this: How would you describe your decorating motif?” That is a non-threatening question that does not require the customer to make a buying decision. It also opens the door for an in-depth conversation during which the salesman might have learned much about the customer’s wants and needs. He may have heard them express a need that he could easily fill. With enough knowledge of their needs, he probably could have led them to some corner of the store and merely pointed, saying, “Would this serve your needs?” Then he could have stood back, listening for more information, or watched while the customer closed the sale for him. PROBING TIP #3: Ask need-development questions. You have to do more than get your prospects to talk. You must get prospects to tell you what they need. Therefore, ask questions that will give you insight into how each prospect perceives their needs. Our troubled furniture salesman might have given himself a big raise by asking walk-in customers, “What kinds of entertaining do you enjoy?” or “What kinds of activities does your family enjoy doing in the den?” PROBING TIP #4: Ask questions that help you identify dominant needs. Usually there is one overriding need in the prospect’s mind. Knowing that will help you to ask the right questions. Ask questions that will probe for that single, dominant need. “What do you like least about your present car?” a car salesperson could ask. An attentive, skillful

listener, willing to let the customer talk all about the old jalopy out front, could get enough information from that one question to close a sale. If four customers could answer that same question about the same car, you might hear: “We need something much larger. We’ve got a two-year-old and we just had twins!” “I need something much smaller. It gets lousy mileage and it’s too hard to park.” “It’s been the best car I’ve ever owned, but I just got a big promotion at work and I’m ready now for my dream car.” “It’s been the best car I’ve ever owned, but the dealer has the worst service department I’ve ever dealt with. Though the car is reliable, it’s often out of service for days awaiting simple, routine maintenance checkups. I need speedy service.” “It’s a real clunker. I really can’t afford a new car, but I’ve got to get something more reliable.” Many customers do not look at what they really are after when they first walk in. The guy with the growing family may have stopped first at the Corvette convertible in the front of the showroom. Then, when an old-school salesperson asks, “If the deal is right, would you drive that home tonight?” the customer may laugh inside, shake his head, and steer clear of that salesperson. True value-based probing questions would reveal the customer’s dominant need, allowing the salesperson to continue. PROBING TIP #5: Ask questions that help you pinpoint the dominant buying motivations.

Buying motivations and needs are not always the same. Buying motivations address desires, feelings, tastes, and so on. I will illustrate the difference between buying motivations and buying needs with another of my own anecdotes: I regularly sell my professional speaking services over the phone. When a prospective client says that he or she is considering booking me, I will often ask: “Who have you had in the past?” Their answers reveal what kinds of speakers they like. If all they give me is a list of names, at least I learn what kinds of speeches they like. I can then get them to talk specifically about one or two who were particularly well received by their audiences, and why they were popular. That way I will know exactly which of the benefits that I offer to emphasize most. You might discover the same sort of information by asking, “Who are you buying from now?” PROBING TIP #6: Avoid asking offensive questions or asking questions in an insensitive way. Some questions can offend prospects and cause them to back off from you. This is more important than ever before in our history. There is a very strong push to be “politically correct” in everything we say and do in America today. Many people today are in a hyper-sensitive mode and can easily be offended. Those who are hyper-sensitive may respond more strongly to a “politically incorrect” statement than by merely throwing you out of their office. People have become targets of legal action for saying things that only a few years ago would have gone unnoticed or possibly produced only a brief awkward moment. In a closely networked, crowded market, a reputation

for offending buyers can spread rapidly and severely limit your sales potential. Some examples of pitfalls to avoid are: • Never use leading or “setup” questions

such as, “You do want your employees to share in the success of the company, don’t you?” What is the prospect going to say? “No! Let the ungrateful fools tough it out!” Then again, maybe that will be their answer. Either way, you lose.

• Nosey questions can be a real turnoff, or worse. Asking a woman, “What time will your husband be home?” might be asking her for information she does not wish to give out to strangers.

• Sometimes your manner can be threatening. Instead of asking, “How much can you afford to spend?,” why not phrase it, “How much had you planned to invest?” or “What sort of budget level do you have in mind?”

Planning your most often-asked questions in advance will help you dissect them for offensive overtones. You also should try them out on non-customers. A sales manager could organize workshops where the salesforce could assume the roles of sensitive customers, allowing other staff members the opportunity to get feedback in a safe environment. PROBING TIP #7: Start with broad questions, then move steadily toward questions with a narrower focus. Broad questions are usually less threatening and yield general information. Thus, they can help you get things rolling and steer you in the right direction. An example of a broad question might be: “What kind of future do

you see for your firm?” As your Probing becomes more comfortable and picks up speed, you will need to get more specific with your questions. “How many employees do you plan to add in the next 24 months?” is a good example of a narrowing question. PROBING TIP #8: Ask questions that are easy to answer. Questions that require knowledge the prospect does not have can often make a person feel stupid. For example, asking a customer who is buying stereo speakers, “What’s the maximum continuous RMS wattage per channel on your amplifier?” might get you a dumb look for an answer. The smarter you make your prospects feel, the smarter they will think you are and the better they will like you. A better opening, one that most people could answer, might be, “Do you have a large, powerful amplifier?” Anyone who knows the exact RMS continuous wattage per channel of their amplifier will give you that for their answer, just to show you how much they know. If not, then you will not have risked intimidating a less savvy customer. PROBING TIP #9: Use questions to guide the interview and keep it positive in tone. Some people love to ramble on and on. When the sales talk takes such a nonproductive turn, you are no longer selling, but have begun a conversation. By skillfully using questions, you can keep the interview focused and control its direction so it continues to produce useful information.

Be especially alert for those people who have a tendency to drift into explosive subject areas like religion, politics, race and deep personal problems. You must keep the talk on-track. Phrase your questions so people can easily respond positively Studies have proven that most people prefer to agree than to assert themselves and disagree. Agreement is easy. Disagreement takes energy, diverting energy away from the subject at hand: meeting your customer’s needs. Always try to structure your questions so the easiest response is agreement. PROBING TIP #10: Ask. Then shut up and listen. The prospect cannot talk while you are talking and you cannot learn while you are talking. Never use your listening time to think up a witty comeback. Instead, have your leather binder and pen in hand and listen attentively analyzing every word that your prospect says. People who see you take notes won’t expect a hasty answer, but will be favorably impressed as they watch you refer to your notes as you formulate a carefully tailored response. To really use these ideas, click here.

Questions are your greatest selling tool, but they only further your probing if you use them properly to gather information about the prospect’s needs. The better you become at asking questions, the easier it will become for you to sell as you move toward the ultimate goal of any sales talk, the close. A sure way to easily complete your closes is to remember and implement this adage: You cannot talk people into buying, but you can listen them into it.

The Master Keys Of Selling: Asking And Listening

he best way to boost your customer impact is to cultivate an empathy for the customer and to understand his or

her needs, interests, and desires, and to know how to get them what they want. I based that idea on the wisdom I learned from an inspirational salesman who taught me the greatest secret of success in selling: THE GREATEST SECRET IN SELLING: Show people what they want most, and they will move heaven and earth to get it! That secret comes from an anonymous source and was first revealed in print by Frank Bettger, who learned it from an “old timer?’ Mr. Bettger used its power to make more than a million dollars in selling during the early years of this century. I will show you an easy-to-follow plan that will put the greatest secret in selling to work for you: • Discover what they will buy why they

will buy it, and under what conditions they will buy it.

Mastering The Master Keys The master keys to discovering what your prospects want are asking and listening. They are your most effective implements for opening up the mind and heart of your prospect. Unfortunately, many salespeople have serious misconceptions about the meanings of those two key words, asking and listening. Let us look twice at what we mean. First as they become defined in typical sales jargon, then through the perspective of value-based

selling. In old-school selling jargon, to ask means one thing-to ask for the order Often, asking people to sign an order blank is the first question some salespeople use. It is so common that most of us cannot remember the last time a salesperson asked us a question such as, “How will you use it?” or “What do you like most about it?” Without such personal interest questions the buyer may well feel cheated. Now we will re-examine those two words - asking and listening - this time with the value-based selling philosophy in mind. You will see different meanings for those two words when viewed in terms of customer focus: Asking means that if you ask enough of the right questions throughout the interview you will likely get an order. Listening means that the most important task of the salesperson is to pay careful attention to what the prospect truly says. Later I will explore in detail how to use the master keys of asking questions. First, let’s ask two vital questions about listening, then examine their answers: • Why do most salespeople find it so hard to

listen to what their prospects say? • How can you improve your listening

skills? Most salespeople have been conditioned to ignore the prospect’s needs and desires. What is uppermost in our minds as we walk into a prospect’s turf? Never be ashamed to say it: The number one thought in our mind is to

close a sale. Most salespeople focus on what they will get out of the sale not what the prospect will get out of it. The selfish streak in most of us is reinforced by our traditional sales training. Unfortunately, much of today’s selling stresses our needs and interests. We go out looking for prospects to buy what we are “selling,” try to “warm them up” so we can lay our “pitch” on them, then “hit ‘em with the close.” If we do it well, we can make big money... for a short while. Countless salespeople have been trained to use their listening time to think up what to say after - and sometimes before - the prospect finishes. To improve your listening skills, that traditional focus must change. To survive in a crowded marketplace, we must lay aside our own interests so we may discover and satisfy the needs and desires of our customers. This new focus is different and your customers will notice the difference. It will make your sales efforts successful even where others repeatedly fail, even where you may have previously failed yourself. Self-Centeredness Is Not In Your Best Interest Please do not misunderstand. We have never suggested anyone adopt a martyr attitude and lay himself at the feet of every prospect, caring nothing about his own needs. What we have discovered is that there is a vast difference between self-centeredness and serving your best interest. Fortunately serving your best interest usually serves your customers’ best interest. Here is that concept, expressed in a simple principle:

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PROBE PRINCIPLE #1: The best way to serve your own interest is to put the needs and desires of your customer first! If all you want to talk about is your interests, your products, your product’s features or your company then do not be surprised if you encounter strong sales resistance from the outset. If you focus instead on the prospect’s interests, the prospect’s needs and desires and the prospect’s values, you will notice a remarkable difference in that person’s openness to you. The care you take in laying a foundation will pay dividends because your customers will trust you enough to open up. PROBE PRINCIPLE #2: To deliver value to the prospect, you must see yourself primarily as a value resource for the prospect! What separates you from a vending machine is that you have an opportunity to meet and to respond to the widely varied and specific needs of each customer you serve. The most helpful attitude a salesperson can have is to see himself or herself as a resource for meeting the needs and fulfilling the desires of customers. If the primary focus of your sales approach is creating value for the individuals you meet, you will not only become an effective value-based salesperson, you will become a well-paid salesperson. To focus primarily on creating value, you must know what your clients consider to be valuable. The only way to do that is by probing. PROBE PRINCIPLE #3: To be a value resource for the

prospect, you must first discover what the prospect perceives as value! To paraphrase a familiar adage, “Value is in the eye of the beholder?” That a product comes in 47 colors might be of little value to a person who is color blind. Something that is light-weight and easy to carry might be a real turnoff to a weight lifter. And the story of a “40 per cent savings” on an artificial heart showed how much value that represented to a patient who merely had a headache! Your selling success will rise in direct proportion to your understanding of the value systems of your prospects. And that comes from the first of the Master Keys of Selling - Asking. We are now led naturally into the second vital component of listening- improving your concrete listening skills. How You Can Improve Your Listening Skills Skillful listening is a highly professional undertaking. First, you must look like a professional listener. Get a top-quality leather binder with a legal pad and pen loop. This will be your primary listening aid. Treat it as if it were the most valuable piece of equipment you have, for it may very well prove to be just that. Once you are ready to start the probe step, open the leather binder as the prospect watches, take out its pen, and say, “In order for us to see how we may best serve you, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Then stop! Do not say another word until the customer gives you permission to ask those questions. We cannot emphasize enough how important

this waiting interval is; it sets a pattern for everything that follows throughout the course of your sales interview. Use the same caution with each question you ask after they have agreed to answer. Always wait for an answer. How To Listen People Into Buying People who talk themselves out of sales do a vast majority of the talking and little listening. People who use their mental skills instead of their verbal skills do most of the listening and very little talking during the probe step. The first step toward improving your listening skills is simply to begin doing it. Keep a mental stopwatch for yourself and your prospect. How much time are you each logging? Once you are listening instead of talking, you will be ready and able to enhance your listening skills. Listening is a skill that can be learned and also can be continually improved, but most of us have never been trained to listen. For example, which do we do most during the day read or listen? Most of us generally listen more than we read, yet how many listening lessons did we get in school? It is not surprising that most people need help in becoming skillful listeners. The many evaluations we have conducted in our consulting work consistently show salespeople with miserable scores in the areas of listening skills. Sales managers need to be especially mindful of the listening skill levels of your youngest salespeople who have grown up in today’s fast-paced world of rock videos and Music Television (MTV). Their ears may have been deluged with more words in their young lives than many sales managers

have ever even heard. As a matter of mental survival under a barrage of hyped-up verbiage, many young people have nearly turned off their listening skills. They have certainly had little motivation to develop them. We urge sales managers to use their intuitive insight skills around the office to monitor their staff members’ progress. They will listen no better to a client than they will when listening to their sales manager. Here are ten great pointers that can help sharpen listening skills in any situation: • Open your eyes, mind and ears to be truly

receptive to the messages the other person presents.

• Begin listening from the very first word and give the person your undivided attention.

• Focus on what the prospect says. Avoid trying to figure out what the person is going to say; you may miss what he or she actually says.

• Do not try to read meanings into what you think the person is saying. Actively help the other person convey his or her meanings accurately to you.

• Never interrupt! Interrupting is offensive and rude. Also, it sends a subtle message that you are not serious about listening, possibly cutting off the dialogue flow.

• Control outside interruptions and distractions.

• Use questions to encourage people to talk and to clarify your understanding of what they mean.

• Make notes of important points. Look for connections between apparently isolated remarks.

• Get your whole body involved in listening and show that you are paying attention. Look the person squarely in the eye, using facial expressions and other

non-verbal clues to show that you hear and understand what they say

• Remain calm. Never overreact to highly charged words and tones. Hear the person out, then respond. Most people will cool down and begin to talk calmly once they vent their anger and frustrations.

n the old-school method of selling, the term demonstrating merely meant to show how your products work, what they

look like, and all they will do. But in today’s crowded marketplace, the hard facts presented in a standard, product-focused demonstration are often minor considerations to most consumers. Doing a data dump on a prospect merely adds your name to the long list of sources that continually deluge today’s confused buyers. Demonstrating is no longer enough; in fact, it can work against you in making sales. In value-based selling, demonstrating your product is essentially a process of applying what you sell to the needs and wants of your prospects; it is application selling defined. That is why we call this phase Apply instead of Demonstrate. Applying describes more accurately what needs to happen for you to consistently make sales. Applying means that you show prospects how they can get value by buying from you. Here’s a couple of examples to make it specific: APPLY POINTER #1:Choose the Most Appropriate Product or Service

Remember, your objective is to listen your prospect into buying. You do not need to remind yourself of what you think; you must find out what your prospect thinks. There is not one sales principle that requires you to “get your two cents worth in.” To learn to master non-verbal skills, click here.

As simple as that sounds, it is also one of the most troublesome. Yet, choosing the right product to show is a vital part of the Application step. It is troublesome for two primary reasons: First, salespeople often jump right into a traditional demonstration without discovering the prospect’s deepest needs and wants. After all, they reason, there is no need to waste time. The prospect generally knows what he or she wants, and other products up or down the line can be shown later, right? Wrong! The true time-waster is showing products that are inappropriate for your prospect’s needs. Here is an example, taken from our files, of what can happen when you attempt to jump straight to the Apply stage. We say attempt, because if you do jump here, you degrade it to a Demonstrate phase. You do not yet know enough to Apply. Our story is from a photocopier salesperson who confessed that she once learned a valuable lesson by blowing a sale she could have made: A prospect’s secretary called her and said her boss, the president of

Turn Your Demonstrations Into Power-Packed, Value-Based Applications

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a small company, wanted to see a copier that day. The copier salesperson made an appointment for late that afternoon. She threw the top-of-the-line model into her station wagon and drove 50 miles to make the demo. She allowed plenty of time to set up because that baby could run colors, could collate thousands of pages, could do automatic stapling, and just about everything else but make the coffee. After delivering her canned demonstration, the company president said, “I don’t need all that stuff. We never do colors and we do not have any use for collating and stapling. What I want is a machine that will give me top quality prints of single pages and spit them out in a hurry?” He did not even ask the price. When the salesperson promised to be back the next morning with the right machine, the man said he was going out of town that night and suggested she call for an appointment “next week.” You can guess what happened. When she called back to make an appointment, she discovered that her prospect had bought a competitor’s inferior product at a higher price than her deluxe job would have cost. This is not an unusual story in today’s highly competitive, tightly niched markets. Very often you get only one shot at demonstrating your product or service. Anything you show after that is anticlimactic, even if you get a second chance. Downgrading can be embarrassing for the client, and upgrading can be tough for you. The only way to be really sure what to show is to probe thoroughly until you are certain about your prospects’ wants and needs.

The second reason that choosing the right product is often troublesome is that salespeople often show the products they are most interested in. They may not have one clue of the prospect’s desires. This is one area where a skilled, value-based sales manager can dramatically improve the success ratio of an entire salesforce. You must be careful to never give your salespeople a reason to focus on products that only meet their own needs. One warning we regularly deliver to sales managers is to carefully evaluate the structure of sales contests. The problem with most contests is that they encourage salespeople to push only the products being rewarded in the contest. The needs of the client become secondary and a salesperson who honestly met the true needs of a client with a product not on the contest list may even suffer financially or appear low in the contest standings. Worse yet, others who steadfastly push the contest products may walk out of office after office with no orders at all. Many salespeople will lose interest in filling your customers needs if it is with an order that does not give them points in the contest. Contests, therefore, may be useful only in the short-term. They might temporarily mask your true problems, but in your long-range plans, you must focus on the needs of your customers. Contests have even been found to harm the long-term reputation of an organization when customers suspect that its salespeople are pushing products to win a contest. Such an attitude can be viewed by buyers as an insulting display of a lack of consideration for their needs. Highly successful value-based salespeople know that the most appropriate choice of products or services to show are always the ones that the prospect needs most and is most

likely to buy. One well-known truism in sales is: Give people too many choices and they will make no choice. In today’s crowded market, your prospects face a dizzying glut of choices in products and services. Your value-based selling, however, will cut through the confusion by limiting the choices you give your prospects to those that fulfill their dominant need. APPLY POINTER #2: Tailor the Presentation to the Prospect’s Needs and Wants Have you ever noticed how motion picture directors use cameras to show you what they want to emphasize? They open with a broad shot of a huge crowd of people, then they narrow the field of vision, zooming in ever closer. Eventually, they may focus on one person, moving in for a close-up to capture the non-verbal language of facial expressions. What a producer does in zooming in for a close-up is to call your attention to what they believe to be the focal point. A successful director will understand what you most want to see. You have to do the same. Then, when most salespeople are using demonstration selling, you are using application selling, zooming in on what the prospect wants to see. Here are four possible focal points for your demonstrations. Which one will keep you on-track, transforming your passé Demonstrations into power-packed, value-based Applications? • You can focus on the product, which is

what most salespeople do. They love to talk about all the gadgets, the features, and variations of their product.

• You can focus on the company you

represent and talk about their reputation for service, dependability, and fair prices.

• You can focus on yourself by saying, “I want to tell you why I believe so strongly in this product” or, by noting that if you sell 200 widgets this week you will win a free trip to Bermuda.

• You can focus on the prospect what he or she wants or needs most and what value they will gain by ownership.

efore prospects will buy what you

are selling, you must prove it is worth more to them than it will cost. Before you can do that, you must believe it yourself. If you do not frankly believe that your product or service is a bargain to your customers, you will have a tough time justifying your price. Besides, if you are only selling to make a quick buck, you will find it a difficult way to earn a living. Today long-term success requires a deep-rooted belief in the virtue of your profession and in what you sell. That thought leads us to a principle of value-based selling:

You must believe that what you sell represents real value to your prospects. Before you can convince your prospects that you are giving them value, rephrase this principle as a question and ask yourself, “Do I believe that what I’m selling represents a real value to this prospect?” If you cannot

So, which did you choose? Right! You’ve got to focus on the prospect. If you use the other three focal points, you outnumber your prospect three to one never outnumber your prospects. Few prospects will care anything about the first three. But, if you really connect with them on number four you have a high probability of closing sale. To add more sell to your “show and tell,” get very personal with it. Click here to learn more about IMPACT.

answer that with a resounding “yes,” then you basically have only three options: either convince yourself of your product’s value, quit selling it, or abandon value-based selling and rely on your old methods. Despite how firmly we each may believe in our products, or how excited we may get over them, we are not the ones who need convincing. To ease your efforts in facing that challenge, we have developed four Price Justifiers, that are each explained below. Appealing To A Jury Of One Besides yours, the only opinion that truly matters is that of your current prospect. If that person believes he or she can get enough value to justify the cost, you have a sale, otherwise you do not. It is that simple! As we have seen before, however, what is simple is not always easy. Let us explore some ways you can justify your price in the prospect’s mind.

Price Justifier #1: Imagine a Value Meter. You have seen hokey versions of price justifiers in those fast-paced television commercials that peddle overpriced merchandise as a bargain. The announcer will say “You get this complete 12-piece set of super-sharp knives, plus this handy butcher’s guide, plus this European chef’s cookbook all for the unbelievably low price of $19.95. But wait, that is not all. Act now and we will include the Brooklyn Bridge... that is a whopping $3 million value! And it’s all yours for this special TV - offer price of $19.95.” While this TV huckster’s application is executed poorly, their basic idea is sound. It is one of the most effective techniques for justifying your price. You simply stack up the values in the mind of your prospect until they are convinced your price is no longer an issue. To measure the value you build during your presentations, picture an imaginary value meter in your prospect’s mind. Form a graphical, mental depiction of a meter needle that you move up every time you increase value. However you track value, it is vital that you make the prospect keenly aware of how much value he or she will receive for the money spent. To help the prospect keep track of the value needle’s position, frequently conduct values reviews that summarize all the values you have demonstrated. Sell every benefit as if it were the greatest of all values, and just keep adding more of them. Never rely on your assumptions that a benefit is understood. Check the value meter through feedback from the prospect.

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DEALING WITH OBJECTIONS Justify Your Price By Proving Value

Price Justifier #2: Interpret relative values. Interpreting relative values is an ongoing process that will need careful attention as you work at convincing your prospects to buy. You may well find it to be an issue even in the final phase when you are tying up the sale. We found a great example of interpretation of relative values when we recently conducted some sales consulting for a sales professional whose products are highly sophisticated home security systems that may cost more than $10,000. He told us that, “It’s not worth that to me,” is a common response from a prospect who hears his quoted dollar price. That is when the alarm salesperson must become a values interpreter. One technique that has proven to be highly successful is for the salesperson to turn to the prospect’s wife and say, “Mrs. Brown, your husband has told me he travels a great deal, right? Would it be worth that much money to know you are safe from possible intruders, and that you can sleep comfortably when your husband is not home to protect you?” Suddenly a different interpretation of values has raised significantly the value of the product. “It sure is!” she will usually say. “Uhhh! Where do I sign?” the husband quickly asks. When someone says, “Your price is too high,” start asking yourself “Compared to what? Compared to peace of mind? Compared to being the best dressed person you know? Compared to convenience? Compared to an inferior product?” Once you find the value (or combination of values) the

prospect considers higher than the price, interpret that as a benefit to the prospect. One cautionary note here is that if you regularly hear that objection, “Your price is too high,” it is a sign that you have not made a solid application sales presentation. If you hear that question, rather than forging bravely ahead, hoping they will forget about price if you talk fast enough, you should drop back into some probing questions to discover how to add more value. Learn how to sell value by clicking here. Price Justifier #3: Personalize all values. The most significant question you must help your prospect answer will be “Is this worth what it will cost me?” Endorsements from other customers will not answer this question. Neither will a top rating from Consumer’s Guide. Nor will being widely acclaimed by experts as the best bargain in the industry. The ultimate test will always be the answer to the very personal question, “Is it worth it to me?” That is why probing is so crucial to value-based selling. Probing is where you identify the personal values that matter enough to your prospect to justify whatever you charge for your product or services. If you offer enough benefits, tailoring those benefits to meet personal desires and interests, then you will easily convince your prospect that your price is not too high. For example, we have worked with many automobile dealerships who sell expensive luxury cars. If the value they present to their prospects is mere transportation, few people would pay. If, however, they focus on the prospect’s

personal values that include prestige, comfort, reliability, styling, or luxury, they can easily move the needle on the value meter high enough to justify the price in such a prospect’s mind. The key to their success has come when they readjust their salesforce’s perceptions to understand what benefits move up the value meter in the mind of a “high-end” car buyer. In the absence of a values interpreter, all sales degenerate into a struggle over price. Once you have interpreted values, you pile them onto a balance scale in the prospect’s mind. The higher a value ranks in the prospect’s value system, the greater weight it will carry on those unseen “justify-the-price” balance scales. Speaking of scales, here’s a great way to tip them quickly. Price Justifier #4: Sell the key benefit The key benefit that lies at the core of a dominant need is the greatest justification you have for the price your prospect must pay to get whatever you are selling. Advertising agencies often ask their clients, “What is your unique selling proposition?” In other words, what is there about your product or service that sets it apart as superior to all other products or services on the market? In value-based selling the answer to that question is always personalized to be: the benefit this prospect finds most attractive. To the real estate sales professional it may be a cherry tree in the backyard. It may be a certain look, a convenience, a texture or feel, a sense of security or anything else that the prospect becomes most deeply emotional about.

Whatever the prospect’s dominant need, you must identify and isolate the key benefit related to that need because it is the one that will open the door to the sale. The greatest justification for paying any price is, “I like it!” Your task is to help your prospects like what you are selling enough to pay the price for it.

Needed: A New Direction In Sales Training

raditional sales training does not focus on customer needs; instead, most sales training focuses on outdated

approaches that work only for short-range goals. If you have felt frustrated by a failure to attain long-range success, you may have experienced one, if not all, of the basic fallacies of current sales training. These are the most common misconceptions we find in today’s training philosophies: Regarding product training as sales training - This idea assumes that the only thing salespeople need for success is to learn the features of their company’s products or services. Though product training is vital, it is not the whole picture. Any company that merely calls its Salesforce in to acquaint its people with new products is sending them out with only one weapon to fight a multi-faceted war. As we have pointed out before, long-range successful selling cannot be viewed as adversarial. Your products are not weapons with which to wrestle dollars out of customers’ pockets.

Using a motivational speaker to get salespeople hyped up –

Motivational hype merely revs up the engine without shifting into Drive. Motivation without a reliable plan only generates frustration and produces the long-range effect of sales burnout. Using complicated sales training systems— Many current systems rely on clever buzzwords that have little meaning to the typical person, complex ideas that turn salespeople into amateur psychologists or sly manipulators, and closing techniques designed to trap prospects into saying “yes.” Even the salespeople who master such arcane systems often discover it conflicts with their own values because they bombard salespeople with myriads of techniques designed to equip them to regard the customer as an adversary or perhaps an idiot, and close in for “the kill.” Customers who are naive enough to fall for yesterday’s trick closing techniques will not be in business long enough to give you a long-range career even if you could keep fooling them. Buyers today are highly sophisticated and demand an entirely different focus from those of even a decade ago. To learn more about implementing this, click here

The Salesperson’s Greatest Folly Most traditional sales training is based on inflating salespeople with self-serving slogans and high-sounding talk. Not surprisingly then, focusing on the customer’s values is often the last thing on the mind of a typical salesperson when he or she faces prospects. Wrongly the focus is most often on the salesperson talking their way into a sale. This gem of wisdom from a highly

successful professional football coach illustrates the salesperson’s greatest folly: In a game during the NFL’s 1990-91 regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles humiliated the Washington Redskins on ABC’s Monday Night Football. Before a huge national audience, the Redskins, who had won the Super Bowl less than three years earlier, were thoroughly defeated and suffered the more momentous defeat of having nine players knocked out of the game, many of them removed on stretchers. By the final quarter of the game, Washington ran out of quarterbacks and had to substitute a rookie running back to steer their offense. The Redskins went home and found that the humiliation was not over. The Eagles continued to taunt Washington in the press. The insults boiled to a fever pitch when Washington and Philadelphia were scheduled to play in the first round of the championship play-offs seven weeks later. The Eagles had set a record that season for knocking opposing players out of games and they prided themselves on this ability. In pre-play-off game hype, the Eagles advised Washington to bring “body-bags” to Philadelphia. Despite all the hype, Washington coach Joe Gibbs continued to run his team in the cool, level-headed style that has become his signature. The Redskins said nothing in the press about Philadelphia, choosing instead to direct their energies toward the true task at hand: winning Saturday’s game. The tactic paid off Before a huge national audience, the Redskins avenged the earlier defeat and won the game that counted, knocking the Eagles out of the play-offs with a solid 20-6 victory.

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Before the game, a Washington Post reporter had questioned the Redskins for being so mum, suggesting they were intimidated by the Eagles. The Washington offensive coach gave him an answer that is one of the best gems I have ever heard: Most of the things that can go wrong in life happen when your mouth is open. Salespeople who have been brainwashed at sales meetings and then turned loose on prospects need to remember that NFL play-off story. Never fall victim to the salesperson’s greatest folly trying to talk your way into sales. Here is how it can work against you in selling: ‘Hi! I’m Mary Smith with the XYZ Company. I can see from your left hand that you are a married woman, so let me tell you

about a wonderful new perfume that guarantees to make your husband sit up and pop both eyes wide open when you walk into the room. May I come in and show you...!” bubbles the enthusiastic saleswoman. “Good! I hope it will do all you say says the stunned prospect. My husband died last night, and I thought you were from the funeral home.” Trick door openers, canned sales pitches, and speed-talking approaches rely on the element of surprise and focus on the salesperson doing all the talking. Unfortunately in today’s crowded marketplaces, it is most often the salesperson who gets surprised. Forget The So-Called “Quick Buck” Perhaps that explains why one-third of all salespeople are looking for different jobs at

any given time, and why it is not unusual for sales organizations to have an annual turnover rate of 125 to 175 percent of their salesforce. Sales organizations that use trick ads to lure unemployed and disillusioned people to “unlimited futures” in selling by intimidation, rob many capable people of their great potential for an honorable selling career and perpetuate the myth of the quick buck sales career. If selling has become an unpleasant chore for you because you close so few of the sales you attempt, you may need to look no further than the way you approach prospects. Stop talking and start listening! Focusing on your prospects needs will raise more than your closing rate; it will raise your self-esteem.

CLOSING SALES

Closing Tips For The Value-Based Salesforce

‘m going to show you how to complete a sales transaction while keeping the emphasis focused where it should have

been focused throughout your entire presentation: on the prospect! Tie Up The Sale, Never Your Prospect We have traded in the old expression closing the sale for tying up the sale because closing has become sales jargon for tying up the prospect. The traditional closing approach will never deliver long-term growth and success in today’s value hungry markets. Today’s buyers have been so heavily

inundated with clichéd sales pitches that they have heard all the old-school tricks before. Because of this widespread phenomenon, you have to be at the forefront of today’s value-based selling environment. Value-based selling does not rely on clever closing gimmicks to trick people into something they really do not want to do. Nor is closing the centerpiece of a sale, around which all other elements are built. Tying up the sale is a natural outgrowth of providing value-based services for your prospects. It can even be an enjoyable and exciting time - both for you and for the

prospect. Remember that your prospects want what you are selling, or they would not buy it. They probably wanted it before you walked in. Perhaps they only wanted a need fulfilled and you showed them how to apply your products or services to fill that need. The underlying theme in this final phase is that you have already accurately identified what your prospect wants and they understood that they

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need it. With that knowledge, all that remains is a simple process of tying up the loose ends of the transaction so that you both get what you want. There are four basic elements to tying up the detailed conditions of a sale. • Negotiate the conditions of the sale. • Clear away objections. • Ask for the order. • Reinforce the sale. Negotiate The Conditions Of The Sale Negotiation entails working out a mutually satisfactory agreement between two or more people for something both want to do. Successful negotiation requires handling the details so that all parties involved feel they have won. Clear Away Objections To ensure your long-range success, always view objections as conditions that must be met before a satisfactory sale can be consummated. The way you handle objections will often determine whether you make the sale. In other words, it can determine whether you Tie Up your prospect with a satisfactory deal. Most objections raised by prospects emanate from feelings rather than a factual standpoint. To apply that fact, the salesperson must deal with objections forthrightly by addressing the feelings bA

must stand far above the old price-oriented mentality, always focusing on value and trust. The real reason most salespeople deal so poorly with objections is that they do not know how. All their training has focused on memorizing canned responses to every objection that could possibly come up. They sound like playbacks of recorded messages, “If a prospect gives Objection Number Four, you counter it with Response Number 67.” You should forget all of them you ever learned. A successful value-based salesperson never responds to objections with canned answers. The key to eliminating objections with a customer-focused orientation will be in treating each uniquely relating to specific needs. Ask For The Order Everything you have done up to this point is wasted motion unless you ask for the order. However, asking for an order is not nearly as major an activity for a value-based sales professional as many salespeople and trainers traditionally make it out to be. If you have discovered what your prospects want most and shown them how they can get it then asking for the order is a natural final step. Reinforce The Sale Once a prospect makes a decision to buy, many salespeople pack up and get out as fast as they can. We have found that prospects

seems as if the salesperson is silently saying that they should make a speedy exit before the prospect changes his or her mind. Never rush for the door before the ink dries on an agreement. You are experienced enough to know that if a customer truly wants to back out, they will find a way to back out no matter what they have signed. Moreover, your haste to depart can damage the trust bond you have worked so hard to create. Besides, if you have successfully completed a deal through proper value-based selling, you will have full confidence that the customer has no desire to back out. Don’t make them feel they’ve been a victim of a quick-hit artist. Instead of running off quickly take time to let the glue dry on this new bond you have just created. It is better to take a few minutes to tie up any loose ends before you leave. By lingering a few minutes, you can help reinforce the positive aspects of the sale for the customer. Remember that you are selling trust and value and that a few extra minutes can reinforce those perceptions for your prospect. Once you fully embody a needs-based system, you can mobilize your entire salesforce, arming them, too, with these powerful techniques. And, even as your sales climb, you will find yourselves working shorter hours than ever. In short, you will come to see why I like to call value-based selling: Working Smart In a Crazy World! Learn how to finalize transactions by clicking here

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ehind them. A traditionally flippant s an IMPACT Selling professional, you

often gain much intuitive insight from the body language of a hit-and-run salesperson. It

t’s a lot of money but just look at what all ou’re getting!” is asking for trouble.

canned response like that cannot possible eal with the true feelings of today’s ophisticated and demanding prospects.

All Is Lost If You Don’t Ask For The Order!

‘m going to show you how to complete a sales transaction while keeping the emphasis focused where it should have

been focused throughout your entire presentation: on the prospect! Value-based selling does not rely on clever closing gimmicks to trick people into something they really do not want to do. Nor is closing the centerpiece of a sale, around which all other elements are built. Tying up the sale is a natural outgrowth of providing value-based services for your prospects. It can even be an enjoyable and exciting time- both for you and for the prospect. Remember that your prospects want what you are selling, or they would not buy it. They probably wanted it before you walked in. Perhaps they only wanted a need fulfilled and you showed them how to apply your

You cannot make the buying decision for your prospects, but you can ease the decision-making process for them. We have developed five tested and proven techniques for making the buying decision easier for you and for your prospects. You must choose whichever is best for you based on your own style and on the circumstances of each individual situation. CLOSING TECHNIQUE #1: Use trial closes throughout the interview. This simple concept involves beginning to move toward the close before you actually get there. By moving slowly forward in small increments, the final jump may be a small step. Here’s a great illustration of the concept:

Trial closes work just like the monkey-fist. Throughout the negotiation step, you use small test questions that will not throw your client off balance. If the prospect grabs one and starts pulling on it, hook the close to it and allow them to wrap up the sale for you. A typical trial close is, “Is there anything that would keep you from going ahead with this?” “Can you see how it might work the same way for you?” is another good one. This trial close technique is about as close to a canned approach as a value-based salesperson should ever get, but always think about each prospect individually and find a trial close that feels natural for that situation. Trial closes are a good way to ease into asking for a buying decision and may tell you that it has already been made.

products or services to fill that need. CLOSING TECHNIQUE #2

The underlying theme in this final phase is that you have already accurately identified what your prospect wants and they understand that they need it. With that knowledge, all that remains is a simple process of tying up the loose ends of the transaction so that you both get what you want. Ask For The Order Everything you have done up to this point is wasted motion unless you ask for the order However, asking for an order is not nearly as major an activity for a value-based sales professional as many salespeople and trainers traditionally make it out to be. If you have successfully completed the first five steps – finding out what your prospects

Sailors use what they call a monkey-fist to simplify what could be a tough task, The big ropes they use to tie a giant ocean liner to a pier are often four to five inches thick and may weigh hundreds of pounds. Can you imagine how hard it would be to throw one of those massive ropes from the ship to the pier? Even if a team of big stevedores could do it, how would you like to be the poor guy on the other end who had to catch it? So, sailors have developed a special technique in which they tie a little ball monkey-fist to one end of a small rope and toss that over. The guy on the pier easily catches that, ties the small rope securely and starts pulling it in. The huge line is tied to the other end and comes right along with it. Mission accomplished!

Ask them to buy now. When you feel the time is right, simply ask your prospect for the order. Be cautious, though; the way you ask for an order can make it easier or more difficult for the prospect to make a buying decision. We have found a question that has a high success rate for thousands of salespeople, “Is there anything that would keep you from buying now?” There is nothing tricky about it. If you have successfully built value for your prospect, asking for the order is merely a matter of tying up the loose ends of the sale. You look them straight in the eye, ask them to buy, and then do not

want most and showing them how they can get it – then asking for the order is a natural final step.

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say another word until the prospect has responded. Many salespeople are so afraid of rejection that they feel they must break any silence that lasts more than a few seconds. They may even jump in and say something damaging like, “Maybe you need more time to think about this” or “Now, I don’t want to make you feel pressured.” Interrupting will only delay the decision at best and it may sabotage it permanently. Remember that some people simply need a little space when they are making a decision. We have found some salespeople who are reluctant to use such a direct close as those we have recommended. For those, we offer two other techniques that also work well. CLOSING TECHNIQUE #3: Assume the sale. Many excellent salespeople are more comfortable to assume that the prospect has bought and start handling the paperwork, all the while asking the prospect questions about details. When they finish writing up the order, they might ask, “Is there anything else we should include before we finalize the agreement?” If not, write the final terms on the agreement, mark a big “X” where the clients should sign, then hand the agreement and your pen to them. This approach is a variation of the first one where we recommend using trial closes throughout the process to move gradually toward finalizing the deal. Also with this technique, prospects never have to make one big decision to buy—just a series of smaller decisions and many prospects feel much more comfortable with that gradual process. One drawback to assuming the sale is that some people feel pressured when

you hand them the agreement if they are not ready to make a decision. Therefore, when you use this technique, keep your intuitive insight in high gear for signs that your move makes the prospect uncomfortable. If you sense any uneasiness, lay the agreement aside and drop back to some probing questions to uncover the true reasons they are feeling hesitant. To learn how to sell better using your computer, click here. CLOSING TECHNIQUE #4: Use the Either/Or Close. Some salespeople do not feel comfortable with any of the first three closes because each boils down to a “yes” or “no” answer. Another method that makes it easy for prospects to decide to buy is to use closing questions that give them a range of answers. One of the most effective alternative closes is commonly known as the either/or close. Here is how to give your prospects more options then “yes” or “no.” In the either/or close, ask a question that lets them choose between having it one way or another. “Do you like it best in the conventional style, or would you rather have the newer model?” “Should we schedule delivery Wednesday or do you prefer that we schedule it for next Monday?” “Do you prefer to make a single payment, or would you rather use our convenient easy payment plan?” One good way to lead into an either/or close is to summarize the benefits and state the price just before you ask the question. It is best to ask the question immediately after the prospect has made a positive statement about some feature or benefit he or she particularly likes. The greatest advantage of the assumptive

close is that it shields people from having to make a straight-forward buying decision. Instead, you give them an option that is far less threatening and implies that they have made a positive buying decision. There is much less pressure in simply choosing which model they want or the conditions under which to buy. The either/or closing technique puts the least direct pressure on prospects of any of the options we recommend. CLOSING TECHNIQUE #5: Deal with fear of making a decision. Often you will find a prospect is sold on the product, feels comfortable with all the conditions of the purchase, yet remains hesitant to make a buying decision. In such cases, it is vital that you allow the prospect to proceed on their own internal time clock. Never make a thinking prospect feel rushed. We had a young graduate of one of our seminars report a case to us where this had happened to her. This is the story she passed on to us: “In a recent sales interview, I had become excited about how much I was going to earn from a huge deal I was just about to close. However, the prospect just kept hedging and I got impatient, and probably a little too pushy. The woman stopped me and said, ‘Look! If you can give me a few minutes to think about this, I might say yes. If you have to know right now, the answer is NO!” “I instantly recovered with, ‘Take as much time as you like!’, then leaned back with a big friendly smile after laying the agreement aside. Next, we talked for 20 minutes about her family, then she signed the order without a moment’s hesitation. That’s one mistake I’ll never make again!”

It will not always be that easy. Still, if you sense a prospect’s request for a little time or space is a cover for a deeper barrier to making a decision, then probe into exactly why the person is hesitant. If you discover there is some key issue that remains to be settled, handle it in stride and get back on-track with the close. If you do not find the true basis underlying the prospect’s hesitancy, keep probing until you pin down the dominant factor. Once you uncover a key issue this late in the process, focus on the issue as precisely as possible. Use very straightforward, honest questions, such as, “If it were not for the balloon note at the end of the lease agreement, would you be ready to go ahead with this?” If the prospect says “yes,” then you know exactly what you are dealing with. With an answer that clear, you would then end your reversion to probing and negotiate a new set of conditions that are acceptable. In this final step, we will assume that you are with a prospect and you have

hat one syllable word redefined the very essence of the selling profession in the last decade of the 20th

Century? What was the singular most dominant concept that directed and controlled sales success in the 1990’s? That all powerful word was change! And that same phenomenon will forge the tone of politics, technology and every phase of the world’s structure

dealt with them as a model value-based salesperson. They trust you. They like you. They believe you know what they want. Now, halfway through the close, you have negotiated the conditions of the sale and cleared away every objection and are ready to sign the order. The Pay-Off The important thing is that you both reach this stage of the sale with (1) a clear understanding of the conditions under which the prospect will buy, and (2) a strong trust bond between you and the prospect. With both of those firmly established, your prospects will trust in you when they see your interest lies in helping them get what they want. Once you fully embody a needs-based system, you can mobilize your entire salesforce, arming them, too, with these powerful techniques. And, even as your sales climb, you will find yourselves working shorter hours than ever. In short, you will come to see why I like to call value-based selling: Working Smart In a Crazy World!

well into the 21st Century. It will also continue to be the major driving force behind the new face of professional selling. Permeating change will cause a new set of increasing and all encompassing needs to appear in the marketplace. Sales professionals will need to anticipate and adapt to a series of events that will dictate their ability to meet the unique demands of the increasingly demanding marketplace of the 21st Century

and beyond. Massive change will occur throughout our fast-paced world. Trends in the global economy will affect corporate and consumer spending patterns and behaviors in more direct and immediate ways than ever before. A key yet unknown, variable is how well sales organizations and their sales staffs will respond to it. Change will require continual adjustments and course corrections in the marketplace and in the ways in which sales professionals deal with its complexities. What are some changes that the crowded marketplace of the 21st Century will bring? Here are just a few possibilities: FOCUS: Customer preferences for design, quality, flexibility, style, technical superiority and even for terms of the purchase, will become more important and will change on an unpredictable and more frequent basis. If the focus of your salesforce is on your company’s reputation or on the demonstration of your products, you will miss the rapidly changing needs of your customers. In a crowded marketplace, the successful organizations and their sales forces will be those whose focus is on answering the customer’s needs and preferences. LEVERAGE: Economic trends will find their way to the marketplace more quickly and will be in full force almost immediately. You’ll need to constantly monitor these rapidly emerging trends and search for ways your company’s strengths can best serve them. This concept is called leverage.

The Watchword Of The 21st Century

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Leverage is an important tool; nonetheless, its application will change continually. ALIGNMENT: The crowded marketplace will enable prospects and customers to respond to unsatisfactory customer service, poor treatment or product dissatisfaction with vendor changes rather than tolerance. In light of this reality, your company’s marketing strategy and your sales strategy will need to be in close alignment. If not, then the inevitable conflicts caused by any misalignment of these two strategies will drive your customers to other companies. Do you wish you bad a crystal ball to predict exactly how these changes will affect your company? We cannot give you a crystal ball, but we can help a great deal. To learn more about focus, leverage and alignment, click here.

How To Thrive In The 21st Century Your sales forces can no longer afford to sell in a vacuum. Ever-increasingly the power of mass communications, macro and micro economic realities, consumer issues, value shifts, and even politics and global affairs will dictate day-to-day selling activities. As such, most traditional sales philosophies are outdated in today’s crowded marketplace. The future belongs to the sales organizations that are flexible and non-traditional in their thinking. Creative companies willing to adapt their concepts or thoughts, beliefs, and actions to the new marketplace realities will rule the economy of the coming decade. Companies who could not or would not adapt now litter the graveyard of business. The companies of the 21st Century that will

end up in the graveyard are those that continue to use traditional selling techniques. Among the techniques that will turn companies into dinosaurs in the crowded marketplace are: • Selling without consideration of the wants

and needs of the customer. • Canned, trite phrases, tricky closes and

coercive selling techniques. • Scripted sales presentations geared

toward the broad view that emphasize your company and its products.

• Selling pure price instead of value. • Adversarial selling. • Complicated, confusing selling systems. • Failure to investigate the market for

highly-qualified new prospects. • Selling that is not backed by reliable

service. • Sales forces that do not understand the

role of their company’s marketing department.

• Marketing departments that neither address nor understand the needs of the salesforce.

These approaches will not bring success to your company in the crowded marketplace that exists today - perhaps they never have! Possibly, they only appeared effective because they were used in marketplaces that were less crowded; somewhat like the cliché about being “the only game in town.” That was once possible because some of your customers may have had little choice or knowledge but to buy from you. Today your secret or edge will not last long. Industrial intelligence reports are now readily available. Duplicating a successful product or service is so simple that product differentiation is a thing of the past. If you have found a winning combination, someone

in the next town (or country!) will find out about it and will find a way to usurp your efforts. When they do, they will have the advantage of avoiding many of the mistakes you made and they will bring in a fresh perspective. The closest we can come to offering you a view through a crystal ball is to say that whether or not you have been the only game in town, if you have diligently and honorably served the long-term needs of your customers, the new guy in town will get a cool welcome. Your job is to ensure that when the newcomers arrive - and rest assured that they will - your customers will not be willing to give up the value and integrity they know they can count on with you. The most successful sales organizations and individual salespeople in the 21st Century will be those who best sell two things: trust and value. The 21st Century will be the most demanding, fast-moving era in history for sales professionals. Yet, it will present the most new opportunities. The secret to seizing these opportunities will be to understand the concept of change. It is a concept that winning sales professionals and companies need to leverage to their advantage. Those who fail to recognize or deal with change shall quickly fall as easy prey to those who do.

Six Tools To Locate Qualified Prospects

uring thousands of training sessions and consultations with hundreds of business leaders, we have found unanimous

agreement on one basic point: Lack of qualified prospects is the greatest single cause of failure among salespeople. Prospecting is the toughest part of selling. It means much more than the traditional approach of finding warm bodies you might corral into listening to a standard pitch. Instead, it means identifying qualified prospects, establishing enough rapport with them to gain a good hearing, and setting the stage (time and place) for you to make your best presentations. Prospecting is similar to detective work, but there is another profession even more closely analogous to prospecting: investigative reporting. A sharp investigative reporter always uses the six well-known tools of the journalism trade to track down a story. Those tools are the questions: Who? Where? Why? What? When? and How? The reporter’s standard tool kit is just as useful to the alert salesperson who is committed to the job of Power-Packed Prospecting. This philosophy is not theory, it is a proven idea on which The Brooks Group bases this prospecting principle: Power-Packed Prospecting Principle: The salesperson who asks enough of the right questions, of the right persons, in the

right places, will always have plenty of qualified prospects. We will now present the six tools of prospecting in a general context to illustrate how they may work for you. These general ideas will work in many fields of selling. Your task as a professional sales manager is to apply them to your selling situation and ensure that your salespeople are well-trained in their use. -

Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #1: WHO? An investigative reporter in a city of a million people will get nowhere if he or she assumes that every resident in the city is a likely candidate for a story. Instead, the reporter must narrow down the field to those whose stories are truly newsworthy and then choose a few to focus on in depth. In Power-Packed Prospecting, some excellent who questions for a salesperson to ask to convert suspects within your market into highly-qualified prospects are: • Who has the most obvious need or desire

for the company’s products or services that we sell? For whom is that need or desire most compelling?

• Who are our ideal prospects? (Do not limit your thinking in this area to your current customer list. Think freshly of ideal prospects and describe them in detail.)

• Who do we know now who might fit that ideal description?

• Who do we know now that might lead us to new people who fit that description?

• Who has the money to buy the products our company sells?

• Who has the money right now? • Who has an urgent need for our products? • Who has bought similar products or

services before? • Who has bought from our company before

and might be ready to buy again? • Who has influence on the prospects we

identify? If you approach your who questions creatively you can develop a huge suspect list from those questions alone. An important source for your list probably will be found in your company’s marketing department. In planning the advertising campaign, they have probably already answered most of the questions on that list. This is clearly a major reason why you want to align yourself closely with the marketing department. After your initial list is complete, a key to continued success is to keep asking yourself and your salesforce the same questions repeatedly, constantly looking for names you might have missed or for new names that were not available initially. This list must become a part of your permanent files. Keep it and do not give up on it too early. Here is a good reason why: We found a recent study by the Thomas Publishing Company that revealed that most salespeople give up too early. According to their study 80 percent of sales to businesses are made on the fifth sales call, yet only 10 percent of salespeople call more than three times! Be careful in the way you handle your repeat contacts so you appear as a

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persistent professional and never as a pest. Many salespeople have reported stretching their contacts over more than two years, although one year is a good limit. Maximum effectiveness was found while the list was no more than six months old. So, we now know that a good source for who questions may be in your dusty business card file - and just think, this will be your first contact with them using a customer-focused, value-based approach! Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #2: WHERE? By asking enough where questions, you can turn up prospects beyond your current client list and probably way beyond your initial expectations. You will be amazed at how many lists of people you and your sales staff can find, many of whom will be logical prospects. Here are some sample where questions that produce great prospecting results: • Where do our ideal prospects live? Work?

Play? Socialize? Relax? • Where can we find useful mailing lists of

people who fit the ideal prospects description we developed? (A properly conducted search will provide lists of people by professions, neighborhoods, types and frequency of purchases, credit ratings, dominant interests, property deeds, and so on.)

• Where can we find directories from which to assemble our own lists? (Include the business section of public libraries, clubs, social groups and officers and directors of service organizations.)

• Where might we contact prospects? (While the hottest new trend is toward exhibits and huge trade shows, do not overlook the traditional places in your daily life like

country clubs and health and recreation centers.) This is one area in which the crowded marketplace of the 21st Century may work in your favor. Our fast-paced, crowded society has gone bonkers over lists. Computers have made it possible for those lists to be arranged by every conceivable category. Yet, those computer generated lists are readily available to everyone. Also, they may only serve to increase the number of suspects you have, thereby wasting your time. It is essential to choose carefully focused lists so they produce highly-qualified prospects. The more careful you are in selecting your lists, the more productive they will be for you. Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #3: WHY? Why questions can help set priorities as you seek to transform suspects into highly-qualified prospects. They also can help you decide which approach is best to reach a particular person or group of people. The following why questions are helpful: • Why would this person be likely to buy our

product? • Why would this person resist buying from

us now? • Why might this time be especially good (or

poor) to approach this person? • Why would this person be most likely to

accept an appointment with a salesperson? (If the answer to this one is that they would respond to a referral, can you get a referral?)

Be careful of your attitude when you are asking this type of question. If you approach the why questions negatively, they may talk you out of calling on anybody To see how,

reread the first question with a negative, cynical tone, “Why would this person be likely to buy our products?” When put the wrong way, some why questions can easily produce intimidating answers for inexperienced or even for cynical, experienced salespeople, thereby serving as an excuse for procrastination. If, on the other hand, you always approach them with a positive attitude, they will help show which suspect should get top priority, often pointing you straight to qualified prospects. Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #4: WHAT? The family of what questions in your investigation can boost your prospecting impact by improving your focus on the most powerful content for prospecting. Each what question should focus on what the prospect needs from you or your product. Here are a few you might find helpful: • What will this prospect find most

beneficial about my product or service? What will he or she find least beneficial?

• What questions or statements are most likely to get your prospects talking about his or her needs? What questions are they likely to ask me?

• What more do I need to know about the person to assure success in setting up an appointment?

• What is the formal and informal structure of this organization?

• What information should I try to gain from my initial contact with the prospect?

• What is the single biggest problem I can help them solve?

• What are they up against in the marketplace themselves today? Nearly every market is crowded,

and your prospects likely face many of the same survival challenges you face. You should only invest time asking yourself the what questions about people you have identified as prospects. The higher the quality of your answers to your what questions, the greater your batting average will be in getting prospects to accept appointments. Use this time to find ways to build maximum value for your prospects. Your what questions should reveal what you can do to increase perceived benefits while reducing the perceived price. A successful professional should be able to identify no less than 25 needs their prospects have. Of course, you will focus only on the three or four most dominant needs, finding ways in which you and your products will provide valuable benefits for those needs. But if you cannot name 25 needs, you may be walking past golden opportunities. Failure to have a long list of answers to your what questions is similar to fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #5: WHEN? Timing has a great influence on how successful you will be at prospecting. Too often, salespeople try to set up appointments for their own convenience rather than at an optimum time for the prospect. Others have so few prospects that they jump at an appointment any time they can get one. You must strike a balance. A positive and productive approach to balance is to blend your interests with those of the prospect and always shoot

for the best time schedule for both of you. The answers to some when questions will help you schedule other activities appropriately. Answers to others will help directly in scheduling time for prospecting. Questions like these can help you see the best balance for both you and your prospects: • When us the optimum time for me to do

my prospecting and not cut into my prime selling time?

• When is it most productive from the customer’s viewpoint for me to try to contact suspects? When is it least productive?

• When is this prospect most likely to give me an attentive hearing? When am I at my best? When is a good alternate time that maximizes the answers to these two questions for both of us?

• When should I contact this prospect again if my first efforts are not successful?

One well-known example of a time-waster, for instance, is calling on a busy executive first thing Monday morning. Successful sales professionals know that this is seldom a productive time for an executive, so they schedule other clients for that time. The most successful salespeople practice good time management habits. One good time management technique is to set up quality appointments. There is more to a quality appointment than merely meeting with a qualified prospect. The first three prospecting questions (Who? Where? Why?) show how to find quality prospects. The next question (What?) is designed to target your presentation to those quality people. This fifth question (When?) can maximize the quality of the time with the prospect by ensuring that both of you are ready to focus on the prospect’s needs.

Power-Packed Prospecting Tool #6: HOW? Your how questions are perhaps the most crucial of all the tools for prospecting because many of their answers will evolve from answers to the five other types of questions. You cannot ask many meaningful how questions unless you have explored the other five first. Notice how these are related. Here are some how questions you will find very helpful: • How can l be sure I am doing a good

enough job of follow-up in prospecting? (Who? Remember those old files.)

• How can I use my prospecting time more productively, including the few moments available to me right now? (Where? A long list of where questions will always give you some research to do during slack times.)

• How can I sharpen my prospecting skills? (Why? Always search for creative ways to put your products and services to use.)

• How can I best approach suspects and prospects? (What? Think of what they will most want to hear.)

• How can I make more time for prospecting without cutting into my prime selling time? (When? The leverage of time-management is an essential sales tool.)

The key to making the how questions work for you, just as for many of the others, is to ask them continually of yourself and revise your answers. The last how question is most productive for you when answered specifically for individual clients. The how of approaching suspects and prospects will vary greatly from one to another.

A Final Prospecting Principle “He that questioneth much shall learn much,” said Francis Bacon. Nowhere in sales is that statement more true than in the investigative phase. We have shared with you some of the questions we continually ask ourselves. These questions have helped us and many of our clients completely

ost salespeople are experts at meeting new people. The early phases of a sales meeting come naturally for their

outgoing personalities. But friendly chat is not the true purpose of any sales meeting. Eventually you have got to make a smooth transition to what you came for: sales talk. Shifting gears to sales talk can be awkward, both for you and your prospect. Many of the salespeople who attend our seminars confess that this is the most uncomfortable part of the whole interview for them. I want to give you some techniques so that the transition becomes a natural next step. Setting The Stage For Action, Not For Reaction The shift from friendly conversation to active sales talk is one you must make naturally. When you make it you want a positive response-not a reaction. One helpful image to illustrate how to do this is to see yourself as building a bridge across a chasm. The best way to move a prospect from friendly chitchat to a business sales talk is to give him a firm foundation to walk across. eliminate the problem of not having qualified

prospects to call on at any given moment. As reinforcement, I would like to add one final principle: In a crowded marketplace, all other things being equal, the one with the most information, who applies it most effectively, wins. Click here to learn about how your computer can help you learn these ideas.

Obviously, the most crucial factor in building a bridge is knowing where you are coming from and what your destination is. Two factors that cause many salespeople to fail at building that bridge is that they start from the wrong place or they do not clearly see where they are going. Starting with a tricky foot-in-door tactic and trying to set up the prospect for the kill is one way to start in the wrong place. We have already shown that a better approach is to start from a position of trust and strong rapport. Using the latter of these two will firmly anchor one end of the bridge. Seeing the customer as an adversary to be conquered is one way to have the wrong destination. This can be tough to overcome, however, in a demanding, highly niched market in which your competitors are constantly dealing on price alone. Some prospects believe they prefer an adversarial relationship because they think it will give them a negotiating advantage. Your approach, however, should always be that your purpose is to convey value. If you always focus on the needs of your customers, you will clearly see where the other end of the bridge should be anchored

regardless of the prospect’ initial reaction. One anchor of the bridge is to create a strong trust bond. The other end is to convey value to your prospects through whatever you sell. These two principles are the mental foundations of your selling plan for building a bridge to your prospects. To get started on the bridge, here are some pointers on how the real sales winners begin building their bridges between the foundations of trust and value. 1. Get to the point of your visit quickly. Four things are uppermost in the prospect’s mind from the moment you knock at the door: • Who are you? • Who do you represent? • What do you want? • What’s in it for me? The quicker you can answer those questions, the sooner they can relax and allow you to transition to the sales talk. The answers your prospects pick up to those initial questions will be the first time you can display your customer-focused orientation. Subtly, by focusing on their needs, you will begin to show your prospects where you’ve laid the foundations of your bridge. 2. Avoid being abrupt. Amateurs, or poorly trained salespeople, often say things such as “Well, I know you folks don’t have all day to talk and neither do I, so let’s get down to business.” Or, they may have been trained to ask a startling question that

Building A Bridge: The Transition To Sales Talk

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is initially out of touch with everything that has been said up to that point. Such poor initial tactics show a lack of respect for the people you meet and will strengthen the barriers between you. The most successful selling professionals take a more gentle approach. They ask non-threatening questions or make statements that gently open the door. They also use good manners that honor the personal space of the person with whom they are talking. Something like, “Do you mind if I ask a few questions so I can find out how to assist you better?” will show you want to help them and gets them to talking right away as you wait for their answer. 3. Make it natural. Search for a common interest with your prospects, or for a point of personal pride or joy for them, or for a way to express concern over a problem he or she might be experiencing, and use that as a launching pad for your shift into sales talk. Things have a way of becoming intensely interesting to us when they become personal. Once you have found a tangible way to identify with the prospect, let the transition to sales talk flow naturally from the rapport you have set in motion. When you become personal with your clients in a non-threatening way you become very interesting to them. But sincerity is essential. Never fake an interest you do not have. False flattery, inane chatter, and insincere comments create tension rather than reduce it. If, on the other hand, your interest is sincere and you use a little creativity to find ways to express it, your prospects will return the favor of your attention.

the 21st Century: Success in selling in a crowded marketplace requires a genuine interest in and understanding of people. If your interest is genuine, you will find you naturally identify with your prospects. That, in turn, enables them to identify with you. Once your clients feel that you see life pretty much as they do, that you mean them no harm, you have mixed up a solid load of concrete to build a lasting bridge. 4. Test your bridge before you invite the

client to walk across. Many prospects who have seemed relaxed and comfortable suddenly lapse into morose seriousness or a deathly silence at the first effort to move toward sales talk. Sometimes they will turn into an aggressive attacker. If one of those two things happens, you have just witnessed a nearly involuntary reaction by your client to what they see as the approach of old-school selling methods. The message for your intuition, then, is that you have not built a strong enough trust bond. Building a trust bond leads to action and avoids reactions. Prospects often resist sales talk because they have been subjected to so much high pressure from manipulative salespeople that they are afraid to ask a question, volunteer any information, or show any sign of interest. Therefore, you must continually test the trust you have established. A highly effective way to do this is to introduce sales talk in stages while your intuitive insight stays closely tuned in for reactions. A simple step in that direction is to ask for a small piece of information, then monitor

carefully how freely the prospect shares the information you seek. If you sense reluctance, they are still holding back out of fear over how you will use that information. That will be a clue to back off and build more trust rather then to push forward, adding to the tension. If, on the other hand, you get a warm and immediate response, you know it is safe to proceed. Click here to learn about how your computer can

help you learn these ideas. To Sum It All Up... Here’s a good quotation I often cite in seminars, “All effective sales talk is dialogue. It is not monologue!” To have dialogue with people is to “get in touch” with them in a meaningful way. That personal touch will set in motion a two-sided conversation that proves to your prospects that you value them, their feelings, and their needs. Knowing that you value them will eliminate the nearly certain tension your prospects had before you conducted the meet phase. Alignment between you and your marketing department is also crucial at this stage. It is difficult to build trust now if what you say differs greatly from what the prospect has garnered about your company product or service from its marketing efforts. It is much easier for your prospects to trust representatives who seem aligned with what they expected you to say. Any incongruity creates doubt, apprehension and resistance in your prospects - particularly in a prospect who knows they have a multitude of choices among the many competitors in your crowded market. A basic principle in building customer value is that to get prospects to reach a

This brings us to a basic tenet of selling in

buying decision, you must make their Perceived Benefit greater than their Perceived Price. However, before a prospect will believe that you can bring them benefits, they must first trust you. The meet phase is where you build their trust, then you take that trust with you when you search for specific ways to maximize value for your prospects.

Lowering natural barriers, eliminating tension, and building trust and rapport are all part of the crucial meeting phase of a successful selling plan. The completion of the meeting phase moves you naturally to a sales dialogue in which you will begin the next phase in value-based selling, finding out how to meet your prospect’s deepest needs.

The most powerful time to open formal negotiations is right after your prospect has expressed approval or delight over some feature or benefit. Read that last sentence again; the key phrase is “your prospect has expressed?” You have to regularly ask about the prospect’s feelings and listen as they express them, and you have to listen to what they express about the values you have presented. When you hear the prospect express approval or delight, you simply ask, “Is there anything that would keep you from going ahead with this?”

Then STOP!

‘m going to show you how to complete a sales transaction while keeping the emphasis focused where it should have

been focused throughout your entire presentation: on the prospect! Value-based selling does not rely on clever closing gimmicks to trick people into something they really do not want to do. Nor is closing the centerpiece of a sale, around which all other elements are built. Tying up the sale is a natural outgrowth of providing value-based services for your prospects. It can even be an enjoyable and exciting time both for you and for the prospect. Remember that your prospects want what you are selling, or they would not buy it. They probably wanted it before you walked in. Perhaps they only wanted a need fulfilled and you showed them how to apply your products or services to fill that need. The underlying theme in this final phase is that you have already accurately identified what your prospect wants and they understand that they need it. With that knowledge, all that

remains is a simple process of tying up the loose ends of the transaction so that you both get what you want. Negotiate The Conditions Of The Sales Negotiation entails working out a mutually satisfactory agreement between two or more people for something both want to do. Successful negotiation requires handling the details so that all parties involved feel they have won. In a way, everything you have done up to this point has been a part of negotiating the sale. Though the closing of a sale should flow organically out of your customer-focused sales strategy, your success in negotiations will improve as you strengthen your negotiating skills. To enhance the success of your negotiations, we will give you four winning strategies that have helped thousands of customer-focused sales professionals become effective negotiators. Negotiation Strategy #1: Open the negotiations on a positive note.

Extensive research has proven that question to be the most effective for opening negotiations. It is a sincere and honest question, it cuts right to the center of the matter, and it is not in any way offensive. To use it properly you must stop after you have asked, wait for the prospect to respond, then listen attentively to the answer. If the answer is “I do not see any reason not to go ahead,” you then know you just entered the close phase and can begin writing up the sale. If the only responses you ever hear to that question prompt you to move ahead, then you do not need to read this article. However, as a seasoned sales veteran of highly competitive markets, you know many prospects will still show hesitancy and offer some reason for not going ahead. If so, do not panic, simply continue with more of our strategies. Negotiation Strategy #2: Get all the conditions on the table. The prospect will almost never give you such direct information as in

Negotiating Tips For The Value-Based Salesforce

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saying, “I’ll buy it under the following conditions.” More often, prospects take a more brusque approach, responding only to the specific conditions you have presented. Some responses you might hear are: “I don’t know! That’s a lot of money!” or “I wish you had a more advanced model.” To those answers, many salespeople begin hammering away at all the reasons why the prospect’s objection should not veto the sale. Such tactics from a salesperson are rude, inconsiderate of the prospect’s desires and insulting to their intelligence; they are a major diversion from customer-focus. Most of the conditions brought up by the prospect are merely smokescreens to cover up deeper feelings of uncertainty. You cannot negotiate with a smokescreen when you satisfy one condition, the prospect will raise another You must answer the deeper question, settle the deeper uncertainties. Here is where your intuitive insight will tell you that you need to return to the probing for your prospects’ deepest needs. Probing again is the only way you can get all the conditions on the negotiating table so you can deal with them. Ask questions such as, “Is that the only reason you’d be hesitant to go ahead?” or “If I could show how to solve that problem, would you be ready to go ahead?” Pursuing this line of questioning will eventually bring all the conditions out into the open. Do not attempt to avoid this process. While it may seem as a backward step to return to probing, it is far better to have negative feelings and thoughts come out at this stage than when you are trying to wrap up the sale. Before attempting to move on, you have to guarantee that you have addressed all the required conditions. Once you feel you

have all the conditions on the table, you can go to the next strategy. Negotiation Strategy #3: Make sure you understand the conditions. Make sure you understand all the conditions your prospect has listed. An excellent aid to correctly understanding all conditions is to list them and read them off to your prospect. Restate each in your own words and ask the prospect if they believe you truly understand what he or she is feeling. To begin moving toward negotiations, you might say, “Let me see if I understand what you’ve told me. You feel uncertain that you can handle the timing of an expenditure of this size right now, and that you would prefer a modified implementation schedule. Is that right?” It is important that you clearly understand what the prospect feels. Equally important is ensuring that the prospect also understands what he or she feels. For example, you may surmise that a prospect is feeling, “We can’t afford this,” while what they are actually feeling may be, “We can’t justify spending that much money for such an item to our boss.” The only way you can reach that kind of understanding is through dialogue. There is a big difference between those two positions. Stay with the dialogue process until you are confident that you and the prospect agree on what the stated conditions mean. Negotiation Strategy #4: Offer to try to work out any problems. At this point, you want to make it clear to your prospect that both of you are sitting

on the same side of the negotiating table. In effect, you must convey “I know you’d like to have the benefits I’ve shown you, and I know you have some concerns. I want to help you deal with those concerns so you can have the value I’ve created and the benefits you want.” To do this, agree with your client that you both want the same thing and offer to help him or her eliminate any problems that might prohibit getting what they want. Abraham Lincoln probably did this better than anyone in history, as both a lawyer and a statesman. As a lawyer, he would sit and listen carefully to everything his opponent said. Then he would slowly rise and address the jury. He then began telling the panel how brilliant his opponent was, what a fine person he was, and how he had brought out some very valid points for the jurors to consider. “However,” he would gently add, “there are other facts that need to be considered before you make a decision?” Then he would skillfully list all the reasons the jury should decide the case in his client’s favor. Jurors who sat before Mr. Lincoln have said they felt old Abe was just helping them to reach an honest verdict. That was precisely his approach. He made them feel as if they were on the same side of the issue because he stressed that the prime issue for them both was to reach an honest verdict. The Pay-Off The important thing is that you both reach this stage of the sale with (1) a clear understanding of the conditions under which the prospect will buy and (2) a strong trust bond between you and the prospect. With both of those firmly established, your prospects will

trust in you when they see your interest lies in helping them get what they want. Once you fully embody a needs-based system, you can mobilize your entire salesforce, arming them, too, with

hroughout my sales career, I have steadfastly maintained that personal and professional integrity are essential to

successful selling. In today’s marketplace, absolute honesty is vital. So vital, in fact, that here at The Brooks Group we have consistently found that false claims cost more sales than they will ever gain. It is not enough for you to believe that a claim is true; you must back it up with proof the these powerful techniques. And, even as

your sales climb, you will find yourselves working shorter hours than ever. In short, you will come to see why I like to call value-based selling: Working Smart In a Crazy World! To learn how to practice these ideas alone, click here.

To make that task simpler for you, we have developed four one-sentence aids we call Claim Provers. Here’s the first of the four: Claim Prover #1: If you can prove it, show your evidence. It is important that you actively back every claim you make, especially those that sound too good to be true. each prospect, by beginning with modest claims, keeping in mind this second pointer:

Second, constantly test to make sure you have given enough evidence for each claim. For example, if a prospect says, “Oh, I know that’s true!” it is safe to move on to the next point. But first, make sure you get confirmation through feedback from the prospect. Claim Prover #2: Reinforce all claims visually. The ancient Orientals brought us that familiar adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” What that means to you is that prospects will believe and remember what you show them much more easily than what you only tell them. Studies have shown that people remember only 20 percent of what they hear, but 50 percent of what they see and hear. Bringing along simple graphic evidence will serve to:

prospect will accept. This concept is so central to building credibility that we have turned it into something I call a Convince Principle: It makes little difference what you believe is true, unless you can prove it to your prospect. Our research has shown us that a single claim, proven to a customer’s satisfaction, is worth 100 unsubstantiated claims. Yet, one false claim uncovered by a prospect can do more damage than a truckload of claims you have proven to them. The damage done by false claims is compounded in a tight, niche market because such news will travel fast with today’s instant communications. Be certain you can back every claim you make with irrefutable facts.

The successful value-based salesperson frequently offers supporting data, validating documents and tangible evidence to prove every claim made. Obviously, not every prospect will doubt every claim you make, unless you look like Al Capone. Nonetheless, you can never know which prospects will doubt which claims. Therefore, the safest strategy is to have proof for them all. Here are a couple of pointers to help you with Claim Prover #1. First, the more dramatic and remarkable the claim, the more proof it usually requires. If you claim your gadget can reduce some corporate expense by twenty percent, you had better plan to show a lot of evidence to back it up. At first, be cautious with

• Speed up your proof. • Make your claim easier to grasp and

believe. • Enable your prospects to remember it

longer We are a visually oriented society. In the 21st Century, people have come to expect to have what they hear enhanced by what they see. From office memos embellished with the flair of desktop publishing to fast-paced graphics on the nightly news, high-quality visual reinforcement is a permanent part of our lives. As powerful as visual aids are, there is no substitute for hands-on experience. The study about retention that I cited earlier, also showed that people remember 90 percent of what they hear and apply!

The Cornerstone Of Value-Based Selling: Proving Your Claims

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Claim Prover #3: Let prospects experience it themselves. Another time-proven adage is, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” If you claim that your product is easy to carry, let the person pick it up and carry it around. If you claim your product is simple and easy to use, let clients use it themselves to experience just how simple and easy it is. The hands-on evidence concept can be a tough assignment with some products or services (such as life insurance) and with some types of selling (especially telemarketing). That is one reason so many companies make “free, trial offers.” Still, no matter how tough it is, every bit of creative effort you put into helping people experience for themselves the claims you make will be richly rewarded by increased credibility. Claim Prover #4: Repeat important claims and proofs again and again. Have you ever wondered why major advertisers keep repeating the same commercials over and over? A logical answer might be that they cost so much to produce. Yet, a typical advertiser will spend more money on air time to run a commercial just once than it spends on actual production. Companies run the same commercials repeatedly ad infinitum (sometimes ad nauseum) because studies show it is the best way to get people to believe them, remember them, and act upon them. When you are selling, the more often you repeat something, the better your chances of having it accepted and remembered. Your equivalent of repeating commercials is to repeat the statements that you know to represent value to your prospects. Unlike television ads, however, you will not repeat it exactly the

same way. Instead, you will make your value statements when you show your prospects how your product or service benefits them. Bring Your Own Witnesses The second element of Convincing your prospects consists of enhancing your evidence with the backing of testimony from witnesses. What do the courts view as the most compelling evidence in a trial? You guessed it-an eyewitness! What is the strongest theme in advertising? Word-of-mouth!

hat do the courts view as the most compelling evidence in a trial? You guessed it an eyewitness! What is the

strongest theme in advertising! Word-of-mouth! Word-of-mouth advertising has a high credibility level among buyers for one simple reason: the claim is made by someone who will not profit from their buying decision. Never before has this word-of-mouth been more important than in today’s highly niched, volatile markets. Since there is less room for error, third party testimony has become a significant tool that buyers use to reduce their risks. We have turned these truisms about eyewitnesses and word-of-mouth advertising into a principle of value-based selling: Convince Principle #2: Prospects expect salespeople to make claims for what they are selling, but they are impressed when someone else makes or endorses those claims.

Word-of-mouth advertising has a high credibility level among buyers for one simple reason: the claim is made by someone who will not profit from their buying decision. Never before has this word-of-mouth been more important than in today’s highly niched, volatile markets. Since there is less room for error, third party testimony has become a significant tool that buyers use to reduce their risks. Understanding this will help you prepare in advance to satisfy their demands the instant they ask.

An important corollary of this principle is never to make a claim for yourself or your product that you can get someone else to make for you. The eyewitness concept will never work as an endorsement for your products or services if you merely try to turn it into your own word-of-mouth advertising. Telling a prospect, “Why, just last week I was visiting one of my biggest buyers of our latest super deluxe software package and they went on and on about how it improved efficiency in their department and increased profits enough to earn bonuses for everyone.” Real word-of-mouth advertising flows around you and does not involve your mouth! So, what can you do to corral those glowing things every customer tells you? We have developed four powerful techniques, entitled “Witness Pointers,” that show you how to bring your own witnesses to boost your sales.

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Bring Your Own Witnesses

Here is a creative example of getting others to speak for you: A major corporation where we consulted was holding a roll-out of a new product and the previous model had been notorious for its poor reliability. They had made significant improvements in their new model that they knew would correct the shortcomings, but they still had a serious image problem to overcome. They knew very well that their low credibility would not allow their salesforce to make unfounded claims about the new improvements. Their clever solution was to make before and after videos in which their sales distributors talked openly about the problems of the old model. Then they showed the distributors the new model and taped their discussion of the improved model in which the distributors raved about the great improvements. This showed, using other people’s words, how much better the new product was. It’s important to show concrete evidence rather than tout your own advertising claims. Witness Pointer #1: Try to get a written endorsement from every customer. The best way to get endorsements is to ask for them it is that simple! Yet you would be surprised at how many salespeople either neglect it or are apprehensive about asking. To make you more comfortable when asking, consider the following technique. Remind your customers that their name is widely respected in the business and that

you would appreciate an opportunity to mention them as a satisfied customer. At that point, many of them will volunteer immediately to write a letter. It is highly likely that you’ll get a positive response because in today’s tightly-niched markets many, if not most, of the major players know the others in their focused market. Most people will see a benefit in having their name circulated among others in their own market. If they agree to allow you to use their name but do not volunteer to write a letter, then simply make a courteous request. Very few will turn you down if you have successfully built a solid trust bond, and even then it is usually just for personal or professional reasons. Most customers will feel flattered that you believe a letter from them will have significance. When a customer has agreed to write an endorsement letter, you should offer to return a few days later to pick it up personally. You can say you would like to save them the trouble of mailing it, but you have a much higher purpose than that. First, your return subtly places a deadline that will help get the letter written as promised. Further, it enables you to see the customer again and thank them personally. Moreover, if you have truly built value for your customer, those second trips around often produce leads on other prospects that your customer wants to help by sending them your highly-respected talents! A note of caution: Make absolutely certain that your satisfied customers understand you plan to use their letter as a promotional device. If they do not

want you to use it that way and they find out later you did, you might lose that valued customer. Even when they understand how you will use their letter, reassure them that you will use their sign of good will with discretion and integrity. Witness Pointer #2: Carefully select the endorsements you use with each prospect. We all are imitators. We imitate the people we respect and admire, and sometimes those whom we wish to impress. This supposition can be turned into a powerful buying motivation, one that has worked on you many times. Have you ever tried a new restaurant, store or product or seen a movie because a friend recommended it? Of course you have. Through our research, we have uncovered a gem of a sales motivator for our car dealer clients. Naturally, all customer-focused sales professionals want to find out why the prospect is out looking at cars. One of the most frequent responses their prospects give for buying a new car is: “My neighbor (or co-worker or friend) bought a new car, and I started thinking maybe it was time I looked into replacing mine.” This response often is truly rooted in that old idea of “keeping up with the Joneses.” If you get a similar answer, you have a perfect application technique; just dig up every “Jones” you can think of who has your product. The benefit you will deliver is that your prospect will not have to lust after “the Joneses” new car any more because you will sell them a better model. The more recognizable a name is, the more convincing it will be to your prospect. In other words, if you can do

better than “the Joneses,” then make it specific. Handing a prospect an endorsement from a respected golfing or bridge partner, an esteemed business associate or a friend can be a marketing gold mine. If you cannot find an endorsement from someone the prospect knows, then think of your satisfied customers to whom the prospect can most closely relate. You might choose endorsements from people of similar ages, with similar interests, and similar social status. Even in giant, multi-national corporations an endorsement from an individual unknown to your prospect can still establish a link if the prospect at least respects the company which the endorsee represents. We will finish the discussion of this pointer by tying it back into the first one: “Try to Get a Written Endorsement From Every Customer?” The more endorsements you have in your file, the more likely you will be to present an endorsement that carries weight with your future prospects. WITNESS POINTER #3: Treat endorsements with dignity and respect

An endorsement letter is worth many times its weight in pure gold— so treat it with dignity and respect. Here are several specific ways you can do that: First, only speak of the customers who have endorsed you as if you believe they are the greatest people in the world. Remember that, in your world, they are.

endorsement. The best impression can be made by maintaining them in a separate binder worthy of their value. Third, show them as if you feel you are granting the prospect a special privilege to see them. If, for example, you carefully present each one across a table to your prospect, you create several significant advantages:

• You allow your client time to read them, which assures them you have nothing to hide.

• You show respect both for this prospect and the customer who gave you the endorsement.

• You exhibit a good reason for the prospect to give you an endorsement when you ask later because your actions will demonstrate the careful consideration their letter will get.

People who give you endorsements show a great deal of trust, and prospects watch the respect you give your customers. Repeatedly, we have proven that prospects remember small things like how you handle endorsement letters, because it relates to how you made them feel more than what you said. And they will always remember how you made them feel. For your own benefit, you should file the letters in a cross-referenced system keyed by industry topic of the endorsement and the level of the endorsing executive. Witness Pointer #4: Try to involve satisfied customers with prospects.

a highly convincing piece of evidence. We want to distinguish this practice as vastly different from the old high-pressure tactic of giving discounts or premiums to customers who furnish you with leads or set up appointments for you. Sophisticated buyers in today’s crowded marketplace will react very negatively to that sort of tactic. It leaves customers feeling like one of your employees because you have offered them a payment for work performed. It also tells them very clearly that there was more bargaining room in your final price; they could have struck a better deal. Having such a reputation can quickly ruin your sales effectiveness in a highly competitive niche market. Here is an illustration from the actual experience of a furniture rep who works in North Carolina, near the headquarters of The Brooks Group: This particular rep, I will call her Sheryl, has developed an extensive, mutual sharing network among the furniture retailers who buy from her. When a store gets a large response from an ad or sale on her products, she contacts that store’s manager. She then raves about the dynamite ad she just saw and asks the manager for permission to share the ad with other retailers in her territory, promising that none will be in his town. Since Sheryl is well-known for her network of winning ads, store managers are glad to cooperate, knowing they will be on the inside track to get the best ads from other stores.

Second, protect your endorsements. You have to carry them in plastic sleeves or file folders to keep them looking fresh and new. Never present a dog-eared or soiled

Sometimes you can get a prospect to make an appointment for you with a friend, neighbor or associate. If so, the appointment itself becomes

Sheryl then takes that ad to other stores, suggesting they run a similar sale— featuring her products, of course. “And if you have any

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questions about how well the ad works, call Joe at Smith’s Furniture and ask him,” she will say. Often, she suggests they call him “right now?” When they do, they simultaneously polish Joe’s ego and convince one of Sheryl’s prospects for her. The prospect is thrilled to have a proven, successful ad, Sheryl writes up

a big order as she also scores big points by complimenting a previous customer. Now that is a win-win situation! Sheryl has sold as many as five boxcar loads of furniture in one week, circulating a single ad. It may take creativity and finesse to pull it

off, but Sheryl’s system is an incredibly powerful convince tool. Get your salesforce together to brainstorm for ways you can get your satisfied customers involved in selling for you just as this sharp furniture rep has.

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